Costly Communion : Ecumenical Initiative and Sacramental Strife in the Anglican Communion [1 ed.] 9789004388680, 9789004388697

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Costly Communion

Anglican-Episcopal Theology and History Edited by Paul Avis (University of Exeter, UK) Editorial Board Paul Avis (University of Exeter, UK) Sarah Coakley (University of Cambridge, UK) Jeremy Morris (University of Cambridge, UK) Robert Prichard (Virginia Theological Seminary, Alexandria, VA, USA) Ephraim Radner (Wycliffe College, Toronto, Canada) Rowan Strong (Murdoch University, Perth, Australia)

VOLUME 4

The titles published in this series are listed at brill.com/aeth

Costly Communion Ecumenical Initiative and Sacramental Strife in the Anglican Communion

Edited by

Mark D. Chapman Jeremy Bonner

LEIDEN | BOSTON

Cover illustration: The Kikuyu Conference of 1913 and GAFCON 2008, bookending a century of Anglican conflict. Printed with kind permission of the National Library of Scotland and the Global Anglican Future Conference (GAFCON). Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Chapman, Mark D. (Mark David), 1960- editor. | Bonner, Jeremy, editor. Title: Costly communion : ecumenical initiative and sacramental strife in the  Anglican Communion / edited by Mark Chapman, Jeremy Bonner. Description: Boston : Brill, 2019. | Series: Anglican-Episcopal theology and  history ; 4 | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: LCCN 2018056813 (print) | LCCN 2018061763 (ebook) | ISBN  9789004388680 (ebook) | ISBN 9789004388697 (pbk. : alk. paper) Subjects: LCSH: Anglican Communion—History. | Anglican Communion—Doctrines.  | Anglican Communion—Africa—History. Classification: LCC BX5005 (ebook) | LCC BX5005 .C67 2019 (print) |  ISBN 283—dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2018056813

Typeface for the Latin, Greek, and Cyrillic scripts: “Brill”. See and download: brill.com/brill-typeface. ISSN 2405-7576 ISBN 978-90-04-38869-7 (paperback) ISBN 978-90-04-38868-0 (e-book) Copyright 2019 by Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, The Netherlands. Koninklijke Brill NV incorporates the imprints Brill, Brill Hes & De Graaf, Brill Nijhoff, Brill Rodopi, Brill Sense, Hotei Publishing, mentis Verlag, Verlag Ferdinand Schöningh and Wilhelm Fink Verlag. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, translated, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without prior written permission from the publisher. Authorization to photocopy items for internal or personal use is granted by Koninklijke Brill NV provided that the appropriate fees are paid directly to The Copyright Clearance Center, 222 Rosewood Drive, Suite 910, Danvers, MA 01923, USA. Fees are subject to change. This book is printed on acid-free paper and produced in a sustainable manner.

Contents Contributors vii Introduction 1 Jeremy Bonner and Mark D. Chapman

Part 1 A Sure Witness and Effectual Sign of Grace: Confirmation and the Eucharist in Anglican Life 1 Confirmation – the Excluding Feature? A Study of Anglican Confirmation in Its Ecumenical Implications 1870–1920 11 Colin Buchanan 2 Confirmation and Figuration in the Thornton–Lampe Debate 42 Jeff Boldt 3 ‘Out of Conflict – Development’: the Doctrine of Eucharistic Sacrifice in Twentieth-century Anglo-Catholicism 77 Hugh Bowron 4 ‘The Sacramental Universe’: Theologies of Nature in North Atlantic Anglicanism, 1922–2012 94 Benjamin Guyer

Part 2 Locally Adapted to the Varying Needs of the Nations: Church Union and the Anglican Episcopate, 1900–1950 5 The 1913 Kikuyu Conference, Anglo-Catholics and the Church of England 121 Mark D. Chapman 6 The Kikuyu Proposals in Their Contemporary Ecumenical Perspective 145 Charlotte Methuen

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7 ‘The Assurance of Things Hoped for, the Conviction of Things Not Seen’: Bishop John Jamieson Willis and the Mission of the Church, 1910–1947 163 Jeremy Bonner 8 The Cost of Being ‘Catholick and Apostolick’ for the Church Missionary Society, 1899–1939 192 Ken Farrimond

Part 3 The African Search for an Anglican Via Media, 1890–2013 9 The Poverty of Anglican Prophecy and the Legacy of Arthur Shearly Cripps in Colonial Zimbabwe 225 Thomas Mhuriro 10 The Role of the Invisible but Visible Women in the 1913 Kikuyu Conference 243 Esther Mombo 11 The Kikuyu Conference as a Precursor to the Development of African Christian Theology 252 Zablon Nthamburi 12 The Kenyan Alliance of Protestant Missions 1919–1963: Ecumenism Adrift in a Colonial Society 260 Kevin Ward 13 The Kikuyu Conference and Global South Anglicanism: for What Does the Anglican Communion Stand? 281 Joseph Galgalo Bibliography 301 Index 320

Contributors Colin Buchanan taught from 1964 to 1985 at St John’s College, Nottingham, and was Principal from 1979. He was Bishop of Aston from 1985 to 1989, and Bishop of Woolwich from 1996 to 2004. He served 29 years on Church of England’s General Synod, and 37 years on its Liturgical Commission. He has written widely on liturgy and has authored the Historical Dictionary of Anglicanism. In 1993 he received a Lambeth DD. Jeff Boldt grew up in the Christian and Missionary Alliance. He joined the Anglican Communion and earned an MTS at Wycliffe College, University of Toronto, Canada. He is now a doctoral student and a postulant for the Diocese of Toronto. Jeremy Bonner is an associate tutor with Lindisfarne College of Theology and an Honorary Fellow in church history at the University of Durham. He has published scholarly monographs and articles on Mormonism, the Roman Catholic Church in North America in the twentieth century and global Anglicanism. Hugh Bowron is the Vicar of St Peter’s, Caversham, Dunedin, New Zealand. His current PhD project is a history of his parish, whose Anglo-Catholic character was established by Fr Bryan King, the son of the famous Bryan King who sparked off the ritualist riots at St George’s-in-the-East, London in 1859–60. Mark D. Chapman is Vice-Principal of Ripon College, Cuddesdon, Oxford, and Professor of the History of Modern Theology at the University of Oxford. He has written widely on Anglican history and theology. His books include Anglican Theology (2012) and Anglicanism: A Very Short Introduction (2006). He is also associate priest in three rural parishes in Oxfordshire and Canon Theologian of Truro Cathedral. He is a member of the Church of England’s General Synod and is Co-Chair of the Meissen Theological Conference.

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Benjamin Guyer earned his doctorate in history at the University of Kansas (USA) and is now Lecturer in the Department of History and Philosophy at the University of Tennessee Martin (USA). He is co-editor with Paul Avis of The Lambeth Conference: Theology, History, Polity and Purpose (Bloomsbury T&T Clark, 2017). Ken Farrimond worked for nine years for Busoga Diocese, Church of Uganda. He gained his PhD at the University of Leeds and taught at the College of the Resurrection, Mirfield, Yorkshire from 1997. He is VLE/Blended Learning Officer for the Ministry Division of the Archbishops’ Council of the Church of England. Joseph Galgalo is Vice Chancellor of St. Paul’s University, Limuru, Kenya, and Associate Professor of Systematic Theology. He gained his PhD in Theology from the University of Cambridge, UK. He is also an ordained minister in the Anglican Church and an honorary Canon of All Saints’ Cathedral, Nairobi, Kenya. Charlotte Methuen is Professor of Church History at the University of Glasgow and an Anglican priest. Her research interests include the Reformation, the history of women’s ministry, and the history of the ecumenical movement. She has been involved in ecumenical dialogue with Lutherans and Methodists and is a member of the Inter-Anglican Standing Commission on Unity, Faith and Order. Thomas Mhuriro has been an Anglican priest for more than 24 years. Originally from Zimbabwe, he is currently ministering in the Diocese of Kimberley and Kuruman (Anglican Church in Southern Africa). He has a keen interest in Church History and is completing his doctoral studies at the University of South Africa (UNISA). Esther Mombo is Associate Professor of African Church History, Gender and Theology at St Paul’s University in Limuru, Kenya, where she also serves as Director of International Partnerships and Alumni Relations. Her research and teaching interests span the fields of Church history, interfaith relations, theological education, and women and the church in Africa. Esther serves in several ecumenical committees including the Commission of Education and Ecumenical Formation of the World Council of Churches.

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Zablon Nthamburi has taught in various institutions in Kenya, including Kenyatta University and Africa Nazarene University. He has authored several books including, A History of the Methodist Church in Kenya (1982), The Pilgrimage of the African Church: Towards the Twenty-first Century (2000), and The African Church at the Crossroads: Strategies for Indigenization (1991). He has been intensely involved in ecumenical initiatives, having served in various committees of the National Council of the Churches in Kenya, All Africa Conference of Churches and World Council of Churches. Kevin Ward worked in East Africa for 22 years, as a school teacher in Kenya and theological educator in Uganda. He was ordained in the Church of Uganda. He has written extensively on the history of Christianity in East Africa: the Alliance of Protestant Missions in late colonial Kenya, the East African Revival, ChurchState relations in Uganda, the history of the Ruanda Mission, and attitudes to same-sex relations among East African Christians. He was Associate Professor of African Religious Studies in the University of Leeds until retirement in 2014.

Introduction Jeremy Bonner and Mark D. Chapman In the summer of 1913, a missionary conference was held at the Church of Scotland’s Kikuyu mission in Kenya. The fourth of a series of regional conferences, it was not anticipated that its deliberations would attract much attention outside British East Africa, yet within a few months the Kikuyu Conference had become the ecclesiastical controversy du jour. For the next five years three centuries of debate within the family of Anglican churches regarding eucharistic theology, ecclesiology and episcopal authority would be subject to scrutiny within and beyond the Church of England. Although nominally resolved by the time of the Sixth Lambeth Conference in 1920, the issues raised by Kikuyu – not least the nature of provincial autonomy within Anglicanism – remain a source of division within today’s Anglican Communion. It is perhaps no accident that Kikuyu took place on the eve of the first great military conflict of the twentieth century which many saw as dethroning liberal Protestantism, ushering in the crisis theology of Karl Barth, and speeding the Church of England’s transformation from established church to a denomination with an establishmentarian veneer. In his infamous philippic against Kikuyu, Frank Weston, Bishop of Zanzibar, invoked the still powerful image of the Church of England as ‘Ecclesia Anglicana’. While Weston hewed to the idea of Anglicanism as a national embodiment of catholic tradition, it cannot be denied that it was ‘Englishness’ as much as catholicity that informed the Anglican ideal, not least because the overwhelming majority of its communicants outside the British Isles until 1815 were of English origin. Such self-understanding persisted into the earliest phase of missionary outreach to the indigenous populations of British colonies, most notably in the efforts of the Church Missionary Society (CMS) to recreate English village life among communities of former slaves in Sierra Leone.1 It resurfaced in a slightly different guise towards the end of the nineteenth century under the auspices of such church leaders as Henry Montgomery, Bishop of Tasmania from 1889 to 1901 and later Secretary of the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel, an ardent advocate of the common goals of the

1  See Bruce L. Mouser, ‘Origins of Church Missionary Society Accommodation to Imperial Policy: The Sierra Leone Quagmire and the Closing of the Susu Mission, 1804–17’, Journal of Religion in Africa 39:4 (2009), pp. 375–402.

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Church of England and the British Empire.2 The development of the idea of an ‘Anglican Communion’ was thus clearly informed by parallel developments in the secular world. At the same time, as Andrew Porter and others have argued, the idea of British missionary as merely an ‘arm of empire’ is incomplete and even misleading.3 Relationships with imperial administrators and white colonists varied across time and space and churchmen remained jealous of their ecclesiastical prerogatives. Moreover, as Anglican missionaries grappled with the inculturation of Christian doctrine they became increasingly aware of the limitations of a theological system that defined itself solely by reference to the English religious conflicts of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. From the stalwarts of the Oxford Movement, who supplied the recruits for the staunchly Anglo-Catholic Universities Mission to Central Africa, came an appeal to affirm the patristic origins of the Anglican experiment and the centrality of common sacramental ties across continents and between national churches. From their counterparts in the Evangelical Church Missionary Society and the Keswick Convention came the call for Protestant co-operation or ‘comity’ that would serve to birth native churches that united the Christian converts of various different missionary endeavours but eschewed the replication of the more esoteric doctrinal conflicts of the Reformation. Both approaches – in different ways – appealed to a sense of ‘sacramental’ connectedness which transcended an earlier Anglicanism that had been fundamentally grounded in the Erastianism of the relations between church and state in England.4 The translation of Anglicanism into a missionary context thus had implications not just for the proto-churches of Africa, China and India but also for the Mother Church’s self-understanding. The controversy surrounding Bishop John William Colenso (which prompted the convening of the first gathering of the Lambeth Conference in 1867) had at least as much to do with Colenso’s upholding of the rights of native Africans (albeit within an imperial framework) as with his reappraisal of the Pentateuch and teaching on universal salvation.5 Colenso’s case attained a certain prominence by virtue of his 2  Steven Maughan, ‘Imperial Christianity? Bishop Montgomery and the Foreign Missions of the Church of England, 1895–1915’, in Andrew Porter (ed.), The Imperial Horizons of British Protestant Missions (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2003), pp. 32–57. 3  Ian Copland, ‘Christianity as an Arm of Empire: The Ambiguous Case of India under the Company, c. 1813–1858’, The Historical Journal 49:4 (2006), pp. 1025–54. 4  Two early exceptions to the Erastian paradigm were the Scottish and American Episcopal Churches (established in 1689 and 1789 respectively). 5  Jeff Guy, The Heretic: A Study of the Life of John William Colenso, 1814–1883 (Johannesburg: University of Natal Press, 1983); Jonathan A. Draper (ed.), The Eye of the Storm: Bishop John William Colenso and the Crisis of Biblical Inspiration (London: T&T Clark, 2003).

Introduction

3

office, but the debate over contextualization would recur again and again in missionary outposts across the globe. Was the goal of mission, Anglican church leaders argued, to recreate a common Anglican identity in Freetown, Bombay and Shanghai? Or was it to provide the basis for future national churches that might share doctrinal commonalities with the Church of England but would nevertheless comprehend a distinctly indigenous Christian tradition? If the latter, what doctrinal fundamentals should Anglican missionaries be inculcating? In turn, there were also important implications of such a missionary strategy for the Church of England in its own ecumenical dealings both at home and overseas. From its inception, Anglican identity has owed much to the way in which disputes concerning the authenticity or necessity of particular sacraments have been resolved. Although the Thirty-Nine Articles of Religion bear comparison with the Lutheran and Reformed Confessions, they have in practice failed to stifle conflicts within Anglicanism over such issues as the nature and efficacy of the eucharistic elements, the contribution of the sacrament of Confirmation in making full members of the church, and the role of the episcopate in establishing and maintaining ecclesiastical order. Although the precise nature of these conflicts – and their relative priority in the life of the church – has varied across time and space, it is in the interpretation of the nature of Anglican sacramental life, as expressed in successive editions of the Book of Common Prayer, both in England and outside it, that Anglicanism finds much of its theological raison d’être. Particularly noteworthy was the lengthy debate from the 1920s over the Church of South India which was eventually established in 1947. Here, the decision to permit a united church to include within its episcopate those not consecrated by bishops in apostolic succession was considered by some to cast doubt on its sacramental connection to the wider Anglican Communion, effected as it was by mutual recognition of episcopal orders. In more recent times, the controversy surrounding the election in 2003 of Gene Robinson as Bishop of New Hampshire in the American Episcopal Church was distinctive in part because Robinson, by virtue of the episcopal comity shared by all Anglican bishops, actively lived out behaviour deemed by many to be contrary to Scripture and, necessarily, un-sacramental. For those like Robinson seeking to develop the sacrament of marriage to include same-sex relationships, however, the intent was not to devalue but to enhance its application and – in so doing – to modify the theology of the body which it has historically been considered to express. Similarly, the contemporary debates over communicating the unbaptized and lay presidency of the Eucharist reflect divergences from Anglican norms promoted, respectively, by liberals and conservative Evangelicals. Finally, the debate over the

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authenticity of the Anglicanism expressed by groups such as the Anglican Church in North America has revived the question of where ecclesiological authority in the Anglican Communion actually lies. All these issues reflect a concern with the nature of sacramental unity and the authority that defines the limits of that unity, even though it is important to note that Anglican enthusiasm for authority has ebbed and flowed across the years. While many Global South churches favour a robust leadership style, the same cannot be said for many of their counterparts in the British Isles and North America. A predilection for local autonomy – not just provincial, but diocesan and even congregational – pervades much of Anglicanism in the Global North, which can further undermine the ability to speak with a united voice. The present volume constitutes an attempt to explore the diversity of Anglican sacramental and ecumenical controversies from the late nineteenth century to the present day. Some chapters bear a direct relationship to the Kikuyu controversy and its aftermath. Others, while not directly connected to the Controversy, bear upon the question of sacramental connectedness that Kikuyu brought to the fore. Part One of this volume casts a spotlight on Anglican attitudes to the Eucharist and the qualifications for its reception. Colin Buchanan offers a long view of the controversial question of whether episcopal Confirmation (rather than the sacrament of Baptism alone) for Anglicans constituted a necessary prerequisite to reception of the Eucharist. Arguing that the Anglican ‘consensus’ on Confirmation was a largely nineteenth century creation, he maintains that while Confirmation was initially viewed not as a conferral of the Holy Spirit but as a ‘certificate of spiritual knowledge,’ this gave way to a ‘two-stage’ doctrine of Christian initiation beginning in the 1880s. Such a shift had wider implications for Anglican sacramental initiation and for ecumenical relationships with Protestant churches that would endure for the next halfcentury. Jeff Boldt, by contrast, considers the case of the Anglo-Catholic theologian Lionel Thornton of the Community of the Resurrection, who sought to promote the sacramental necessity of Confirmation during the 1950s. Boldt’s exploration of Thornton’s ‘figural cosmos’ demonstrates an enduring pattern of Anglo-Catholic interest in how the cultures through which a religious tradition has passed enter into the structure of that tradition. Thornton’s preoccupation with the problem of the separation of divine revelation from the day-to-day realities of the created order was nevertheless accompanied by a noticeably sectarian interpretation of Anglican theology that eschewed much of the ecumenical rapprochement that was to follow in the 1960s and 1970s. A different approach to twentieth century Anglo-Catholicism is offered by Hugh Bowron in his examination of the rediscovery of the doctrine of

Introduction

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Eucharistic Sacrifice during the twentieth century. Tracing the development of a theological rationale from Charles Gore through Michael Ramsey and Austin Farrer to Rowan Williams, Bowron posits the notion that Anglican theology has in recent times come to embrace the idea that the act of the Eucharistic Sacrifice serves to create the sacrificial community that participates in it, a dynamic rather than a static process. Against the sacrificial community, Benjamin Guyer argues the case for a developing Anglican understanding of the ‘sacramental universe,’ a product of Anglican engagement with contemporary environmentalism. Noting the contributions of such controversial theologians as Joseph Fletcher, James Pike, and John Robinson, Guyer identifies the emergence of a new understanding of ‘a universe in which everything was sacramental, rather than a world in which natural theology longed for incarnate revelation’ or, as Robinson termed it, ‘eschatological panentheism’.6 The growing importance of a theology of stewardship reflected an increased awareness not just of the needs of the older Anglican churches but also of the day-to-day practical concerns of the Global South. Part Two of the volume turns to the issues of church order and episcopacy as a central feature of the Anglican paradigm. Mark D. Chapman explores the Anglo-Catholic reaction to Kikuyu in England, in particular its reassertion of the goal of church unity grounded in the historic episcopate. Correspondingly, Anglo-Catholic leaders also sought to sustain the general prohibition on Anglicans receiving Communion from non-episcopally ordained ministers, or the opening of Anglican celebrations of Holy Communion to the unconfirmed. In doing so, they presented a vocal challenge to the Archbishop of Canterbury Randall Davidson, whose initial response had entailed a high degree of deference to the attitude of individual diocesan bishops. Such views were generally in the ascendant after the First World War, as Charlotte Methuen makes clear from her examination of Archbishop Davidson’s chaplain George Bell. In her study of schemes of Christian unity contemporaneous with Kikuyu in preparation for the Lambeth Conference of 1920, Methuen notes the continued insistence on the necessity of episcopal ordination and confirmation. The priority accorded to church order is a theme that continues to inform contemporary debates surrounding Anglican sacramentalism. While there was general appreciation expressed for the contributions of the Free Churches, the absence of an episcopal order remained a serious deficiency, though even Bishop Weston conceded in 1919 that it was not necessary to hold ‘any one view of episcopacy

6  John A. T. Robinson, Exploration into God (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1967), p. 160.

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on the doctrinal side, provided that the fact of its existence, and continuance, be admitted a greater flexibility’.7 Two other chapters in this section provide insights into the Evangelical world that informed the lives of many Anglican missionaries in East Africa (and elsewhere). Jeremy Bonner’s contribution considers the case of John Jamieson Willis, Bishop of Uganda from 1912 to 1934. The leading Anglican voice at Kikuyu, Willis in practice proved to be far less inclined to disdain the principles of Anglican ecclesiastical order than his detractors maintained. An active bishop who at times proved more than willing to assert his authority over his diocesan synod, his subsequent involvement in debates over the future shape of Christian churches in the British colonies – particularly the negotiations leading to the formation of the Church of South India – demonstrated the extent to which missionary comity and faith and order issues were intertwined. Ecumenical tensions within the Anglican body politic were not solely the result of theological differences between AngloCatholics and Evangelicals, however, but sometimes prompted dissent within supposedly monolithic groupings. Such dissent is the focus of Ken Farrimond’s study of the Church Missionary Society’s rediscovery of ‘catholicity’ beginning in 1901. This included a commitment to native churches that would be racially inclusive, in communion with the Church of England, and subject to native episcopal oversight. Such a shift, together with a perception that a liberal interpretation of the authority of Scripture held sway amongst the CMS, prompted the exodus of a conservative minority, who constituted the Bible Churchman’s Missionary Society (BCMS) in 1922. The growing closeness of CMS to the institutional machinery of the Church of England reflected a renewed commitment to what came to be termed the ‘diocesanization’ of the wider Anglican sacramental community, which also had the effect of limiting former commitments to evangelical purity across the denominational divide. Part Three of the volume shifts the focus from the British Isles to the contextualization of Anglicanism within African frames of reference and the development of an explicitly African Anglicanism. Thomas Mhuriro opens with a study of Arthur Shearly Cripps’s missionary work among the peoples of present-day Zimbabwe from the beginning of the twentieth century. Mhuriro explores how Cripps, a white English missionary, transcended the racial divide that informed the early twentieth-century imperial project and in so doing served – and serves – as a religious icon for Zimbabwean Anglicanism. The prophetic and anti-imperialist stance adopted by Cripps, though clearly a 7  G. K. A. Bell (ed.), Documents bearing on the problem of Christian unity and fellowship, 1916– 1920 (London: SPCK, 1920), p. 46.

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minority position among his English brethren, attests to the enduring significance of the priestly office in colonial Anglican formation (that there is today a shrine devoted to Cripps is in its own way revealing). The growth of the native church also necessarily gave rise to a greater emphasis on the responsibilities and duties of the native layperson. This proved of particular significance for women – both Europeans serving in mission stations and African converts – for whom the church offered new opportunities, despite its gendered hierarchy. Some of the implications of these developments are discussed in Esther Mombo’s chapter which considers the situation faced by the wives of the delegates to the Kikuyu Conference. It is nevertheless the drive for self-government among African Christians that is of cardinal interest here, reflecting as it does an African concern with church order. Both Kevin Ward and Zablon Nthamburi explore different aspects of this shift in chapters devoted, respectively, to the Alliance of Protestant Missions in Kenya and the development of African Christian theology. For both, what is perhaps most telling is that – at least in the context of Kenya – the early impulse to Christian unity ultimately succumbed both to tensions over biblical authority among the European missionary societies as well as to the rise of African cultural nationalism. The latter ultimately gave rise to the East African Revival Fellowship, a body that in many ways crossed denominational lines yet upon African terms. Ecumenism in Africa thus owed its success less to formal ecumenical agreements than to a common revivalist experience that united believers across denominational lines. This line of thought is completed with Joseph Galgalo’s treatment of Bishop Weston’s question of what Ecclesia Anglicana (today’s Anglican Communion) stands for in terms of the Global South’s attempt to negotiate for itself a space to proclaim a particular vision of Christianity in the Anglican tradition. This is boldly put, and does not reflect the views of most of the contributors to this volume, but it is important that the voice is heard because it continues to pose a challenge for the future of the Anglican Communion as it begins to prepare for the 2020 Lambeth Conference. In a sense the wheel has come full circle from the Kikuyu era, with renewed appeals to church order and to ‘comprehensiveness’ that offer very different visions of what Anglicans understand to be the sacramental community. This book shows that there is no easy solution to the problem but it provides the reader with some salient benchmarks along the road of twentieth-century doctrinal disagreement.

Part 1 A Sure Witness and Effectual Sign of Grace: Confirmation and the Eucharist in Anglican Life

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Chapter 1

Confirmation – the Excluding Feature? A Study of Anglican Confirmation in Its Ecumenical Implications 1870–1920 Colin Buchanan 1 Introduction For much of the twentieth century, Confirmation was seen as the universally necessary route to the reception of Holy Communion at Anglican celebrations. This insistence had strong ecumenical implications. It was, however, not as securely grounded in history as was often thought, and this chapter explores the historical background, and provides a much more nuanced account than the received picture. This exploration was originally set in hand to be part of a volume to mark the centenary of the Kikuyu Controversy of 1913–15. The part played by Confirmation has often been represented as a key factor in that controversy, not least because Archbishop Davidson in his ‘Findings’ listed ‘The admission to Holy Communion of Christians who have not been episcopally confirmed’ as the second of the ‘three items of particular difficulty’ to which the controversy had given prominence. Confirmation and its role inter-denominationally did indeed figure in those Findings, but there remains a question as to how far the Findings were an accurate analysis; certainly three and a half centuries of Anglican developments since the Reformation lay behind the Kikuyu Controversy, and my original brief was to bring a spotlight to bear upon how those developments had shaped the understanding of Confirmation which came into such prominence through that controversy. The brief has since been somewhat expanded from the particular controversy to review how Confirmation stood in the Anglican world more generally in the years down to 1920. 2

Confirmation from 1552 to 1662

The sixteenth-century Reformers retained a ‘Confirmation’ from the medieval use, but they both radically remodelled it and removed it from the category of ‘sacraments’ (see Article XXV of 1571). The rite was reformed to certify that

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the candidates had been properly catechized at an age around 13–16, and the transitive verb ‘confirm’ now meant ‘approve’. Thus the 1552 regulation read ‘And there shall none be admitted to the holy Communion, until such time as he can say the Catechism and be confirmed.’1 This key rubric may appear today to have been pregnant with the exclusive interpretation drawn from it in later generations, but in 1552 it was not seen that way.2 The Catechism came more or less within the Confirmation service, and the emphasis was as much upon the preparation and response of the candidate as upon the actual reception of the rite. Moreover the rite itself had been totally reconfigured, via a half-reformed 1549 rite, as the upshot in 1552 Table 1 demonstrates vividly: Table 1

Sarum rite vs 1552 prayer book

Liturgical item

Saruma

1552

The bishop’s prayer

Send upon them the sevenfold Holy Ghost, the Paraclete, from heaven. Then let the bishop ask the name and anoint his thumb with chrism: and let him make on the forehead of the child a cross … I sign thee N. with the sign of the cross † and I confirm thee with the chrism of salvation, in the name of the Father † and of the Son † and of the Holy Ghost. † Amen. … grant that the hearts of those whose foreheads we have anointed with holy chrism and signed with the sign of the holy cross the same Holy Spirit may come and make into a temple of

Strengthen them, we beseech thee (O Lord), with the Holy Ghost, the comforter Then shall the Bishop lay his hand upon every child severally

The ceremony

The formula

The postConfirmation prayer

Defend, O Lord, this child with thy heavenly grace, that he may continue thine for ever, and daily increase in thy Holy Spirit more and more, until he come unto thy everlasting kingdom. … we make our humble supplications unto thee for these children, upon whom (after the example of thy holy Apostles) we have laid our hands, to certify them (by this

1  This rubric, in whichever Prayer Book it comes, is hereafter known as ‘the Confirmation rubric’. It sprang from a Sarum rubric, itself a development of the Constitution of Archbishop Peckham in 1281 – but he had been trying (possibly in vain) to get Confirmation valued, whereas the Reformers were seeking to ensure universal catechizing. 2  Continental Reformers from non-episcopal churches came and went as guest communicants without question during Edward VI’s and Elizabeth’s reigns.

Anglican Confirmation IN ITS ECUMENICAL IMPLICATIONS Table 1

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Sarum rite vs 1552 prayer book (cont.)

Liturgical item

Sarum

1552

his glory by vouchsafing to dwell therein

sign) of thy favour and gracious goodness towards them: let thy fatherly hand we beseech thee ever be over them, let thy Holy Spirit ever be with them …

a The translation here is that in J. D. C. Fisher, Christian Initiation: Baptism in the Medieval West (London: Alcuin Club/SPCK, 1965), pp. 180–1.

Doctrinally, the Sarum rite had looked for a special illapse of the Spirit upon the candidate – the ‘grace’ of the sacrament – while the 1552 rite looked to a life of discipleship in the Spirit and had no liminal or ‘rite of passage’ character to it. The bishop’s prayer and the formula at the laying on of the hand (itself now a prayer) could both be said quite appropriately for any baptized Christians on any occasion. Cranmer’s clear outlook in respect of any gift of an ‘inward and spiritual grace’ exemplified by the account in Acts 8.14–17 was that ‘these acts were done by a special gift given to the apostles for the Confirmation of God’s word at the time; [and] the said special gift doth not now remain with the successors of the apostles.’3 The contrast in ceremony also reverts to those accounts in Acts (viz, 8.14–17 and 19.1–7), where apostles laid hands on disciples who were already baptized. Cranmer’s rite invoked the apostolic outward ‘example’ as replacing the anointing with chrism which was the ‘matter’ of Roman Confirmation. The example, lay, however, only in respect of that outward ceremony; lacking commandment or promise from Jesus, Confirmation was not a sacrament. It would appear that the Reformers did retain an idea in their own persons that a post-baptismal laying on of hands had continued from the apostles in the early church,4 for 3  Part of Cranmer’s own reply to the questionnaire he sponsored from Convocation as early as 1537, in Cranmer, Works: Miscellaneous Writings and Letters (Parker Society, 1846), p. 86. 4  In my Baptism as Complete Sacramental Initiation (Grove Worship Series no. 219, Grove, Cambridge, 2014) I have pointed out that we can now name from the first two centuries no less than eight authors who make clear reference to water-baptism, and of the eight not one mentions any post-baptismal initiatory ceremony. The Reformers did not have a sufficient catena of these to hand to recognize that there had probably been no continuity of practice of the laying on of hands from the apostles’ time to that of Tertullian. They did have to make sense of the laying on of hands they were prescribing, and for this there was regular recourse to Augustine’s ‘What other is the laying on of hands but prayer over a man?’

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which they had an impeccable further authority in Calvin, who asserted on his own magisterial authority that from the apostolic age the church had brought those baptized as infants to a Confirmation at age of discretion to make a personal profession of faith.5 What is clear is that, along with the positive pastoral purpose of their reconfigured Confirmation, the Reformers were setting clear limits to its significance. Lacking dominical command, Confirmation had to be assessed by its utility, not by some supposed divine authority or promised spiritual benefit. In essence the Church of England had no doctrine of Confirmation. At the Hampton Court Conference of 1604 King James I agreed with the Puritans that it was no sacrament, and clarified it slightly with an expanded title in the 1604 Prayer Book. It became ‘The Order of Confirmation or laying on of hands upon children baptized, and able to render an account of their faith, according to the Catechism following’. More significantly, James caused a section on the sacraments to be added to the Catechism, and this, despite the fact that its very purpose was to prepare the candidates for Confirmation, contained no teaching whatsoever about Confirmation itself. There was still no Scripturebased doctrine of Confirmation, and no Anglican understanding of it beyond what the title and text of the rite might convey. From 1604 to 1660 (with only the interruption of the Commonwealth) this state of affairs remained unchanged. The Restoration of 1660 brought with it an influx of new bishops who understandably expected to be making Confirmation tours. Despite Charles II’s initial commitment to ‘liberty of conscience’,6 the election of the ‘Cavalier Parliament’ in 1661 provoked among Anglican church leaders a more uncompromising stance at the Savoy Conference and in the subsequent revision of the 1604 Prayer Book in Convocation. The Savoy Conference, which met from April to July 1661, saw the Puritan representatives accept the principle of Confirmation but with ‘exceptions’.7,8 (De Bapt. contra Donat. lii.16). Thus Cranmer, in the questionnaire reply cited in note 4 above, says ‘the efficacy … is of such value as is the prayer of the bishop’. 5  Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, IV.xix.6 (and also on Heb. 6.2). 6  Liberty of conscience was promised first in the Declaration of Breda in April 1660, and was part of the reassurance the Puritans thought they had obtained as the basis for inviting Charles back. It was promised again in the Worcester House Declaration of October 1660, but there the longer term issues were to be settled by the projected Conference. 7  I use the term ‘Puritans’ because, although it had a slightly dated look, the more regular alternative of ‘presbyterians’ is simply inappropriate – not only was Reynolds already a bishop, but the whole conference was addressing agenda which might, if all went well for the Puritans, yet lead to them conforming and becoming de iure episcopalians. 8  Baxter, the leading spokesman and draftsman of the Puritans, had published his own comprehensive programme, Confirmation and Restoration, in 1658. This involved the laying on of hands upon those coming to years of discretion, but of course did not involve bishops.

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In particular, they objected to the necessity of having a bishop minister Confirmation and wanted clearer distancing of Confirmation from any sacramental understanding. With respect to the Confirmation rubric, they petitioned, ‘We desire that Confirmation be made not so necessary to the Holy Communion, as that none should be admitted to it unless they be confirmed.’9 Among Anglicans, however, the view of Confirmation was somewhat different. The Convocations of Canterbury and York were already in May 1661 drafting additional services for the 1604 Prayer Book, and among them was a form for ‘Baptism of those of Riper Years’. As the Preface to the 1662 Prayer Book states, there had been no need for such a service in Tudor days, but the ‘growth of Anabaptism, through the licentiousness of the late times’ now required provision for those whose parents had not brought them to baptism since 1645. Thus the title ‘Riper Years’ probably indicated those who had reached ‘years of discretion’, but were still in their teens (a final rubric gave directions for adapting the infant rite for those who had not reached the years of discretion). It had the appearance of an ad hoc provision to meet a transitional need, with the intention that the country would soon revert to universal infant baptism. It was based firmly, mutatis mutandis, upon the existing infant baptism rite. However a new important question – one never asked in the preceding 112 years – was whether such ‘riper years’ baptism was to be followed by Confirmation (it is unlikely that the Reformers themselves would have expected anyone baptized at years of discretion then to be confirmed).10 How that question was resolved is handled below. For the Confirmation rite the Convocations in November and December detached the Catechism from Confirmation and made it a separate service. To give the candidates a personal response in the Confirmation service itself, the bishop now asked them: Do ye here, in the presence of God, and of this Congregation, renew the solemn promise and vow that was made in your name at your Baptism; ratifying and confirming the same in your own persons, and acknowledging yourselves bound to believe and to do all those things, which your

9  For each of the exceptions, the original 1604 text, the exception itself, the reply of the bishops, and a summary of the outcome are shown in four parallel columns in Colin Buchanan (ed.), The Savoy Conference Revisited (Alcuin/GROW Joint Liturgical Study 54, Grove Books, Cambridge, 2002), pp. 62–66. 10  G. W. H. Lampe in The Seal of the Spirit: ‘It is an open question whether Cranmer would have recognized any need for Confirmation in the case of an adult who had made his own personal confession of faith and undertaken his own vows at Baptism’ (London: Longmans, 1951), p. 316.

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Godfathers and Godmothers then undertook for you? [The candidates responded, ‘I do’.] In other vital respects the service was unchanged. There was still no Scripture reading and still no doctrine of Confirmation,11 but the Confirmation rubric was softened and now read: ‘And there shall none be admitted to the holy Communion, until such time as he be confirmed, or be ready and desirous to be confirmed.’ Here was a concession which not only met the Puritans’ request, but also clarified the status of Confirmation. It abolished any supposed absolute necessity of Confirmation for admission to Communion, and made it clear that it was the catechizing and preparation that were critical. In days when bishops had dioceses where no-one had been confirmed for up to twenty years, and even those who were ‘ready and desirous’ might still not be confirmed for months or even years ahead, the question was sharply focused. Confirmation was thus placarded as wholly desirable, but not a sine qua non for admission to Communion. In the case of the ‘riper years’ baptism service, the text of the service was overtly adapted from the 1604 infant rite, and the rubrics in their respective endings may be helpfully compared: Table 2

The endings of the 1604 infant and 1662 riper years baptism rites compared

1604 Infant rite

1662 Riper years rite

[The godparents are addressed, with a direction to ensure that the children learn the rudiments of the Catechism, and should lead lives in the light of their baptism, an address which naturally leads into the final rubric:]

[The godparents are briefly exhorted to encourage the newly baptized, and the newly baptized are themselves then urged to live in the light of their baptism. The address does not naturally lead into the final rubric:]

11  Phillip Tovey, having traced Bishop Cosin’s concern for enriching the text, then somewhat exaggerates the significance of the minimal actual changes which emerged in the 1662 Book (see Anglican Confirmation 1662–1820, pp. 42–43, and Eighteenth Century Anglican Confirmation: Covenant of Grace, pp. 14–15). But the separation of the Catechism from the rite simply accepted the reality that bishops and their chaplains were not going to catechize large numbers at once, and entrusting the preparation to parish clergy meant an actual devolving of responsibilities from the episcopate. This in turn meant that the single question to the candidates in the rite (‘Do ye here ratify and confirm …?’) was the least possible run-on from their preparation into the rite itself; and the response ‘I do’ was the minimal response which the not-always-literate candidates could remember and utter.

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The endings of the 1604 infant and 1662 riper years baptism rites compared (cont.)

1604 Infant rite

1662 Riper years rite

The Minister shall command that the children be brought to the Bishop to be confirmed by him, so soon as they can say in their vulgar tongue the articles of the faith, the Lord’s Prayer …[etc].

It is expedient that every person, thus baptized, should be confirmed by the Bishop so soon after his Baptism as conveniently may be; that so he may be admitted to the holy Communion.

The contrast in the closing rubric between ‘The Minister shall command’ in 1604 and the ‘It is expedient’ in 1662 is instructive. While we lack the necessary records, it is, I suggest, quite probable that the riper years rite was initially drafted in May without the final rubric, or even, more speculatively, with a final rubric which admitted them to Communion on the spot. If so, then the further retouching occurred when the full revision process was under way in November. One can imagine (and this is unscholarly speculation) that the Convocations’ revising committee, when it came to the rubric, had an interchange that went something like this: A: B:

A:

B: A: B:

Do we order those who have answered for themselves in baptism still to go on to Confirmation? Surely not? They have been catechized before baptism, and have answered for themselves in baptism, and are as eligible to receive Communion as those who have been baptized as infants and later catechized and confirmed at years of discretion. Yes, but by definition these are the young men and women from Anabaptist-type families, and, irrespective of questions of the Catechism, ought we not to get them of all people to kneel before a bishop and accept our restored discipline? Well, perhaps, but we must not appear to think baptism to be ‘unperfect’ without Confirmation or Confirmation to be a sacrament commanded of the Lord. Would there perhaps be a compromise in which we called for Confirmation after riper years baptism, not on the grounds that it is requisite, but rather that it is ‘expedient’? That would meet the case.

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The interpretation is not dependent upon these speculations. Whenever and however the riper years rubric was drafted, it exhibits a marked contrast to that in the infant rite, and has some appearance of an afterthought in its own rite. Consistency with the infant rite rubric would have made postbaptismal Confirmation a requirement, but instead the riper years rubric declared Confirmation to be merely ‘expedient’. The final clause bears this out, for Confirmation is being urged not, if we look closely, ‘so that he may be admitted …’ but ‘that so he may …’ The choice of words indicates that, while the drafters thought it ‘expedient’ that the newly baptized should be admitted to Communion this way, they were not precluding other ways. One almost contemporaneous understanding is to be found in the Latin version of Dean Durel (1670); he renders the words ‘ut sic ad sacram Communionem admittatur’. Here, if ‘so that’ had been understood, then a straight ‘ut’ would have translated it, imposing an exclusive route for admission to Communion. His rendering ‘ut sic’ instead provides uncoercively simply a preferred route, and that coheres well with both the opening ‘It is expedient’, and also the ‘or be ready and desirous’ in the Confirmation rubric.12 Episcopal Confirmation thus took its place within the 1662 settlement; but it did not ring-fence the Communion services of the Church of England, and there were those like Baxter who helped set a pattern of behaviour which became known as ‘Occasional Conformity’, by which those who had left in 1662 (or in later generations had been brought up as nonconformists) would at intervals receive Communion in their parish church.13 Though originally practised as a mark of godly unity and peace, it was later employed by nonconformists to qualify for public office under the Crown, for which the 1673 Test Act required annual attendance at Communion in the 12  The translation of this sentence was preserved in the later Latin version of W. Bright and P. G. Medd in 1865, although other wording was changed within this very rubric, let alone elsewhere in the rite. Indeed, in the first rubric at the beginning of the rite where the same ‘that so‘ occurs, Durel has ‘ut eo pacto‘ and Bright and Medd have ‘ut eo consilio’, which strongly suggests that, where they did not change the wording, they firmly endorsed it. 13  There are several key witnesses to this practice in this period in J. W. Hunkin, Episcopal Ordination and Confirmation in relation to InterCommunion & Reunion (Cambridge: Heffer, 1929) and in Mark Dalby, Open Communion in the Church of England (London: Church Book Room Press, 1958). Two further relevant factors which I have not seen discussed are: (i) that Communion in the average parish church only occurred four times per annum, and (ii) that any Puritan attending would have been expected to kneel to receive Communion, which many, even if looking for peaceable relationships with the parish church, would have been reluctant to concede. Another paradox is of course that Baxter and many others had in fact been confirmed in the years before the Civil War – and the requirement of Confirmation has often in centuries since similarly been met by those who have indeed been confirmed, but have clearly left the Anglican fold.

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Church of England. By a loophole, this attendance could be combined with openly dissenting on all other occasions in the year. There were many good churchmen, including bishops, who viewed the practice as friendly Christian engagement by nonconformists with the Church of England, but it was forbidden by the 1711 Occasional Conformity Act. In the whole course of the debate over occasional conformity, however, it never seems to have occurred to anyone in England to invoke the Confirmation rubric to exclude this category of persons who were openly neither confirmed, nor ready and desirous to be confirmed.14 The Anglican requirement of Confirmation was generally seen as a domestic rule requiring catechetical preparation and understanding, a qualification which was well certified by Confirmation, but was not to be viewed as lacking for those who were orthodox in faith, but without Confirmation. Through the ‘long eighteenth century’ (1689–1820) Confirmation was administered triennially and responsibly by many bishops, but was carried out perfunctorily and with little conviction, spiritual zeal, or even decency by others.15 There seems to have been considerable, if patchy, enthusiasm for Confirmation in this period,16 although overseas territories never saw a bishop before the 1780s17 and even within Britain the Channel Islands never saw a bishop from the time of the Reformation until 1818.18 Elsewhere in England, Wales and Ireland there remained a patchiness to the administration of Confirmation, for bishops could not retire, and might be inactive for years prior 14  Even under the provisions of the 1711 Act they were still not excluded. Rather, they were forbidden to return to Dissent! If the Act had any ecclesiological implications at all, it forcibly retained – or included – the persons against whom it was erecting sanctions! The Act was repealed in 1718. 15  Ollard makes much of the evidence of negligent and irreverent provision in some dioceses and by some bishops over this period. Phillip Tovey, to whose recent researches for his volume Anglican Confirmation 1662–1820 (Farnham: Ashgate, 2014) I owe a considerable debt, has unearthed from contemporary documentation much widespread testimony to a more responsible approach by many bishops; and he attributes Ollard’s negative judgment on the eighteenth century to his prejudiced desire to draw a contrast between that and the ‘recovery’ of a godly and health-giving practice through the rise of nineteenthcentury Anglican catholicism. 16  See both of Tovey’s volumes passim. 17  Even after these dates, Anglicans in many of these territories would still have had a fairly minimal chance of ever seeing a bishop. Australia and New Zealand were specifically named as within the jurisdiction of Heber, the second Bishop of Calcutta, in 1823. Australia had no bishop till 1836, and Africa none till 1847, and at the outset there was in each case just one bishop for a whole continent! 18  There is a wonderful chapter in Tovey’s Eighteenth Century Anglican Confirmation: Covenant of Grace, pp. 37–46, describing the visit of the Bishop of Salisbury in 1818 (as requested by the infirm Bishop of Winchester), in which he confirmed thousands of the islanders.

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to death. Some clergy also appear to have been hesitant to take their younger teenage candidates to places which might be over-crowded and even violent when the bishop came on his rounds. Where the duly catechized were in various places unable to get confirmed, they were almost universally admitted to Communion on the basis of their having been catechized, and were then usually treated as not needing to be confirmed. Catechetical preparation seems to have been the sine qua non; the actual Confirmation less important. Two esteemed eighteenth-century authorities on the subject were Gilbert Burnet and Charles Wheatly. Burnet writes at length about Confirmation in his exposition of Article XXV, stating that the baptized should ‘come before the Bishop and renew their baptismal vow’, and ‘the now universal practice of Infant Baptism makes this more necessary than it was in the first times, when chiefly the Adult were baptized.’ While affirming that Confirmation ‘is on very just grounds continued in our Church’, he adds: But after all this, here is no Sacrament, no express institution, neither by Christ nor his Apostles; no rule given to practise it, and, which is the most essential, there is no matter here; for the laying on of hands is only a gesture in prayer; nor are there any federal [i.e. covenantal] rites declared to belong to it; it being indeed rather a ratifying and confirming the Baptism, than any new stipulation.19 Wheatly, while laying weight upon the ratifying of baptismal vows, accords the rite a somewhat higher status in relation to the grace conveyed. ‘Baptism’, he says, ‘conveys the Holy Ghost only as the spirit or principle of life; it is by Confirmation he becomes to us the Spirit of strength, and enables us to stir and move ourselves.’20 Wheatly is struggling with the idea of some special gift, without wanting to assert the full-blown initial conferring of the Spirit which the Acts 8 passage appears to teach (and Jeremy Taylor had propounded). Similarly, preachers at Confirmation (not always bishops) referred regularly to the Acts and Hebrews passages, but did not draw the conclusion that Confirmation provided the initial gift of the Spirit. The limits of understanding appear to have been set by the virtually unanimous agreement that the rite was apostolical and highly desirable, but not a sacrament, and was not of the same necessity as baptism. Some came closer to Cranmer’s spirit in his original compiling of the rite, while others had a higher, if somewhat imprecise, notion of 19  Gilbert Burnet, An Exposition of the XXXIX Articles (1699), pp. 363–4. 20  Charles Wheatly, A Rational Illustration of the Book of Common Prayer of the Church of England (3rd edition, 1715; 1839 impression), p. 374.

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grace conveyed.21 So a mainstream eighteenth-century understanding seems to have been: (a) The apostles laid on hands (especially in Acts 8.14–17), and, although we do not expect the miraculous illapse of the Spirit chronicled in Acts, it is a good and godly precedent for acknowledging and approving as truly catechized at years of discretion those who had been baptized in infancy (and it had Calvin’s authority if that were needed). (b) The available western fathers, notably Tertullian, Cyprian and Augustine, underwrite the laying on of hands (even if for differing purposes), so we can assume that its use has been continuous from the apostles (though corrupted in later years by Rome). (c) Nevertheless, although we pray in the service for the candidates to be strengthened by the Spirit, we do not classify Confirmation as a sacrament (for it lacks dominical command or promise), and we cannot view a lack of Confirmation in the duly catechized as betokening a necessary impairment of their spiritual lives. (d) Thus, if any who are catechized but unconfirmed become communicant, we do not then require them to be confirmed, even if the opportunity arises. 3

The Nineteenth Century

The nineteenth century witnessed a shift in the Church of England with regard to both the outward administration and the theological understanding of the Confirmation rite. During the eighteenth century its administration had been constrained both by the sheer size of many dioceses and the general difficulties associated with travel. The lack of provision for the retirement of bishops and of extra bishops to assist in the task further compounded the problem. But the advent of the railways after 1830 and the steady division of dioceses beginning with the creation of the dioceses of Ripon in 1836 and of Manchester in 1848 and of four others by the end of the century22 helped alleviate the

21  See Ollard, art.cit., pp. 176–223. 22  Peter J. Jagger, Clouded Witness: Initiation in the Church of England in the Mid-Victorian Period 1850–1875 (Pennsylvania: Pickwick, 1982), p. 151. An interesting implication of this trend is to find the first bishops of two newly created sees – George Ridding in Southwell in 1884 and William Walsham How in Wakefield in 1888 – seeking to establish their new see houses not by their cathedrals but at railway junctions, obviously having picked up from existing bishops the vital role the railways played in providing a mobile ministry.

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problem of movement.23 Parliament made provision for the retirement of bishops in 1869 and revived the Tudor practice of appointing suffragan bishops in the following year. By 1900, there were 21 suffragan bishops holding office, supplemented by retired missionary bishops from overseas. The possibility now arose of the Church of England’s bishops being able to provide a reliable and consistent programme of Confirmations to reach every part of each diocese. Although Samuel Wilberforce, Bishop of Oxford from 1845 to 1869, and of Winchester from 1869 until his death in 1873, has generally been credited with the change, there is evidence that dates its origin to the first evangelical bishops, Henry Ryder (Bishop of Gloucester 1815–1824; of Lichfield 1824–1836), Charles Sumner (Llandaff 1826–1827; Winchester 1827–1869), and John Bird Sumner (Chester 1828–1848; Canterbury 1848–1862). Their new ‘pastoral’ approach was characterized by annual Confirmations at larger numbers of centres, in place of triennial or more infrequent tours (thus leading to reductions of numbers at each service), by a greater insistence on parochial preparation of candidates, by services conducted with reverence and solemnity, and by an emphasis on preaching and hymnody.24 An obvious consequence was that it was increasingly unlikely for persons to be admitted to Communion without Confirmation.25 From a doctrinal point of view, it is extraordinary in the light of later debates how little interest the Tractarians and their immediate successors showed in the subject of Confirmation.26 Such a neglect would have been unthinkable to an Anglo-Catholic writing on baptism in the twentieth century. But the high claims for baptism of protagonists such as Pusey, Philpotts and Robert Wilberforce were strictly of a one-stage sort, and they did not discuss such a topic as the ‘completion’ of baptism, which they took for granted was complete in itself. Nevertheless, it is clear that the vast new emphasis upon the sacraments in general, and on Communion in particular, was bound to lead to some changes of understanding; and there were indeed two innovative departures to come. Yet while tracts poured from the press on eucharistic theology, Road transport – in England and worldwide – generally remained horse-drawn until well after 1900. 23  The others of the nineteenth century were Truro (1877), St Albans (1877), Southwell (1884) and Wakefield (1888). 24  Jagger, Clouded Witness, pp. 101ff. 25  In overseas countries, Confirmation developed in ways differing according to the size of dioceses (often vast in the 19th century – see note 17 above) and the pattern which new bishops from England had known at home. 26  Jagger, Clouded Witness, p. 102, actually demonstrates a lack of interest in Confirmation on the part of Newman.

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and episcopacy (at least in the abstract) became an all-consuming passion, Confirmation remained neglected. In the four-volume Life of Edward Pusey, for example, there are but three passing mentions of Confirmation: one of his own Confirmation, one of a godson’s, and one where he says simply that it is a ‘means of grace’.27 Pusey’s vast Tract 67 on baptism, largely on invariable regeneration in baptism, has only a couple of passing references to Confirmation. He is certain that any scriptural references to anointing or sealing refer to baptism, and his one major diversion into discussing the benefits of Confirmation (which he does think is for ‘strengthening … grace’) concludes: It is plain also that those passages of the fathers, which speak of the gift of the Spirit as belonging peculiarly to Confirmation, are to be understood … not as though baptism conferred simply remission of sins, and the gift of the Spirit were altogether reserved for Confirmation; both because they hold baptism to be ‘the birth of water and the Spirit’, and themselves repeatedly affirm the Spirit to be given in baptism.28 Curiously, Pusey gives ten pages to discussing Simon Magus’ baptism in Acts 8, but nowhere touches on the laying on of hands on the more faithful Samaritans.29 In the further massive Tracts 68 and 69, I can only find two passing references to Confirmation, both treating it as ‘strengthening’ – i.e. a rite for growth in grace, not for initiation. The same is true of Robert Wilberforce in his attack on Gorham in The Doctrine of Holy Baptism (London: John Murray, 1850). He is, of course, concerned to maximize the inward grace of infant baptism, but, even where on one occasion he is discussing what further grace is nevertheless needed when an infant grows, his choice of wording is: ‘an augmentation of grace is needed in riper years’ (p. 197), and he fails even to name Confirmation, where a later generation of Anglican authors would hardly have resisted the opportunity to enlarge on it. Confirmation, while having apostolic origins, remained at most a rite for strengthening the candidates. Francis Procter, in the 15 editions (from 1855 to 1870) of A History of the Book of Common Prayer, does not mention any inward grace to be conferred, citing only that it provides ‘admission to full Communion’, while J. H. Blunt, in his (enormous) The Annotated Book of 27  H. P. Liddon, Life of E. B. Pusey, D.D., 4 vols (London: Longmans, 1886–1897). 28  Tract 67, footnote on pp. 153–4 of Fourth Edition (1842). Pusey does refer to an afternote ‘(G)’ which I cannot find in this edition, but is in the 1840 ‘New Edition’ (which lacks the long footnote from which I quote above) – and here he does reflect on the possibility of anointing, but treats it as wholly internal to the baptismal rite in an ‘explicative’ role. 29  Tract 67, pp. 330–40.

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Common Prayer (London: Rivingtons, 1866), which overtly promotes an AngloCatholic viewpoint, says both that ‘in Confirmation [the candidate] is made bold to fight’ and that ‘by the laying on of hands in Confirmation the relation of the confirmed person towards God is also changed, and he becomes competent to undertake spiritual work … for which he was not previously qualified’ (p. 253). Later Blunt says that the candidates ‘may hope for a participation in the gifts of the same Spirit [who rested on Jesus] through that rite by which their Baptism is confirmed, and their Christian nature matured’ (p. 257). As had been generally the case since 1662, no one in the 1840s and 1850s was ready to conclude from Acts 8.14–17 that in baptism there was no coming of the Holy Spirit (though he might come in greater fullness at Confirmation). There thus appeared to be no public controversy on the subject. But the innovative departures were coming. First came the Confirmation rubric, which, as we have seen, was never read after 1662 as excluding nonconformists. Indeed, as the eighteenth century went on, participation in the Church of England’s Communion services may well have increased, as John Wesley’s followers often took seriously his injunction that they were not to leave their parish churches, even while they were also regularly gathering in their own separate societies on Sundays. However, from the point of view of nonconformists thus minded, the coming of the Anglo-Catholic movement after 1833 not only gave an unwelcome catholic gloss to Anglican ritual, but led many vocal Anglicans to label non-conformist churches as ‘sects’ and to accuse them of schism. Any residual temptation to present themselves for Communion in the parish church must quickly have become easy to resist. The famous occasion usually reported as the first rigorous interpretation of the Confirmation rubric to exclude nonconformists is the ‘Revisers’ Communion’ of 1870. This was, however, preceded by an incident involving the then Bishop of London and future Archbishop of Canterbury, A. C. Tait, after he had accepted an invitation to preach on New Year’s Day 1857 at a Communion service in a parish church for an assembly of the Young Men’s Christian Association. Afterwards ‘He immediately received letters … urging him to refrain from attending such a service, as members of the association were Nonconformists, or, at all events, were unconfirmed, and could not therefore present themselves at the Lord’s Table.’30 Tait nevertheless went ahead, and in his sermon, while stating that the Church of England’s invitation was to those ‘who are baptized, confirmed, or ready to be confirmed’, also made it clear that there were present ‘members of some other national Church rejoic30  R. T. Davidson, Archibald Campbell Tait, Archbishop of Canterbury, Vol. 1 (London: MacMillan, 1891), pp. 253–4.

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ing to communicate with the Church of England while they sojourn among us’, and that there might well also be nonconformists who were attracted by the Church of England (on which point he did express some cautions about ‘hanging loose between two systems’). ‘But enough of these matters’, he went on. ‘We are met together today to worship in the Church of England, and we, her ministers, invite you in her name to this holy feast of love.’31 These objections are the first documented instance that the present author has been able to find of the growing confidence of the Anglo-Catholic movement in interpreting the Confirmation rubric as universally and invariably excluding the unconfirmed from Communion. The lines were getting drawn. Just as Tait re-affirmed a long-standing principle of eucharistic hospitality, so Anglo-Catholics affirmed a new exclusivity. However, the real nature of that exclusivity was now shown by a primary emphasis on the fact that the unqualified persons were ‘Nonconformists’, and only secondarily that they were unconfirmed. Tait’s New Year’s Day sermon was but a prelude. In 1870, by which time Tait was Archbishop of Canterbury, Dean Stanley of Westminster Abbey marked the appointment of a cross-denominational panel of scholars to prepare the Revised Version of the Bible by inviting them all to share in a service of Communion in the Abbey on the 22nd of June. The fact that they included a Unitarian provoked widespread complaint, although the two bishops on the panel said they had been glad to be there and even the Hon C. L. Wood (later Lord Halifax) apparently said he was ‘hailing with satisfaction the desire of Presbyterians, Wesleyans and others to take part in the services of the Church’. About a month later, however, a Memorial signed by 1529 clergy of the Church of England was presented to Tait, which expressed our ‘grief and astonishment’ that Communion had been given to ‘teachers of various sects, openly separate from our Communion [including the Unitarian].’ There followed a second paragraph: ‘We also beg respectfully to state our belief, that the Church expressly guards against such a cause of offence by the rubric which requires that “there shall none be admitted to the Holy Communion until such time as he be confirmed, or be ready and desirous to be confirmed.”’ To this Tait replied with a long discussion about the Unitarian, and then concluded: But some of the memorialists are indignant at the admission of any Dissenters, however orthodox, to the Holy Communion in our Church. I confess I have no sympathy with such objections. I consider the interpretation which these memorialists put upon the rubric to which they 31  Davidson, Archibald Campbell Tait, pp. 253–4.

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appeal, at the end of the Communion service, is quite untenable. As at present advised, I believe this rubric to apply solely to our own people.32 The two occasions noted above have in common a presumption on the part of the Memorialists that sharing Communion with dissenters is illicit not primarily because the latter are unconfirmed but because they are in schism. In both 1857 and 1870, the Confirmation rubric was advanced merely to provide a quasi-legal ground for their exclusion. Neither side, it appears, was saying anything about the unconfirmed being insufficiently initiated into Christ or his Church, nor were they seeking to give any doctrinal force to the rite of Confirmation at all, but merely to provide a rule of thumb whereby non-Anglicans would be identified in order to be debarred from Communion. A parallel event occurred (with Tait’s distant connivance) in New York three years later.33 The Evangelical Alliance held a conference to which Archbishop Tait sent the Dean of Canterbury, Robert Payne Smith, to convey his personal greetings. Smith both commended the shared Communion, which was part of the conference, and himself received Communion at a subsequent service at which a Presbyterian presided, presumably doing so with Tait’s knowledge and sanction. Also present was Bishop George Cummins, the Assistant Bishop of Kentucky, who later in the week administered the cup at a similar service, and told the congregation how thrilled he was to do so. The next day the New York Tribune carried a letter addressed to the Bishop of New York, Horatio Potter, complaining of ‘a breach of ecclesiastical order so grave as this which the Dean of Canterbury has committed in your diocese.’ The letter came from Bishop William Tozer, the UMCA missionary who had been the first Bishop of Nyasaland and in retirement happened to be in New York. The ‘breach’ was, of course, the occurrence of this event within the territory of the diocese of New York, without the bishop’s permission and not in accordance with the liturgy of the Protestant Episcopal Church. Bishop Cummins saw himself as the real target of this attack, and he sent his own letter to the press, saying that services 32  R. T. Davidson, Archibald Campbell Tait, Vol. 2, p. 71. Tait’s phrase ‘solely to our own people’ looks like an echo of the section of ‘Of Ceremonies’, the third preface in the 1662 Book of Common Prayer, where Cranmer’s drafting ‘nor prescribe anything but to our own people only’ was retained. Gwatkin also draws attention to the phrase within the Confirmation rubric ‘until such time’ as clearly indicating it was intended as a domestic provision for those growing up as Anglicans, whereas a deliberately exclusive provision would more naturally have read ‘unless’ at this point (cited in an appendix to Dalby, Open Communion, p. 35). 33  The whole of this paragraph is drawn from Allen C. Guelzo, For the Union of Evangelical Christendom: The Irony of the Reformed Episcopalians (Pennsylvania State University Press, 1994), pp. 124–36. The event is not mentioned in the biography of Tait.

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of inter-Communion for such purposes were in no way contrary to the ‘ecclesiastical order’ of either the Church of England or his own Church. The resultant outcry raised against him was so fierce that Cummins resigned his office and within days founded the Reformed Episcopal Church. Throughout this debate, however, while there was much discussion of the Bishop’s jurisdiction and the validity of Presbyterian orders and considerable accusations about Cummins’ disloyalty and worse, there was no mention of the lack of Confirmation as a ground for Cummins to decline to share Communion with nonconformists. The issue concerned giving comfort to a non-episcopal ecclesial arrangement, not the nature of Christian initiation. Despite the outcry against Cummins, the American Church was soon after to give a lead that indirectly favoured Tait’s principles. The Chicago-Lambeth Quadrilateral, originating in the House of Bishops of the General Convention held in Chicago in 1886, was drafted to set out a framework for possible schemes of union, propounding a ‘Quadrilateral’ of the non-negotiable Anglican requirements in such ecumenical endeavours. The 1888 Lambeth Conference adopted it in this form: (a) The Holy Scriptures of the Old and New Testament as ‘containing all things necessary to salvation’ and as being the rule and ultimate standard of faith. (b) The Apostles’ Creed as the Baptismal Symbol; and the Nicene Creed as the sufficient statement of the Christian faith. (c) The two Sacraments ordained by Christ Himself – Baptism and the Supper of the Lord – ministered with unfailing use of Christ’s words of institution and of the elements ordained by Him. (d)  The Historic Episcopate, locally adapted in the methods of its administration to the varying needs of the nations and peoples called of God into the Unity of His Church. This formulation accommodated the foundational distinguishing principle of Anglo-Catholicism in its insistence on the historic episcopate, but it conserved the principles of the Reformers in the first three ‘sides’ of the Quadrilateral. In so doing it may reflect the fact that the Lambeth bishops had themselves mostly been ‘formed’ decades earlier, at a time when Anglo-Catholicism was viewed more as a threat to Anglicanism than as an enrichment. Thus Confirmation – despite being a rite reserved to the episcopate – was generally recognized not to be a sacrament, and consequently not non-negotiable in conversations with other Christian denominations. Such an attitude was evident in the case of Mandell Creighton, the learned and generous Bishop of Peterborough from 1891 to 1897, and of London from 1897 to 1901. Creighton wrote in 1897 that the admission to Communion of a

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Lutheran or Presbyterian can be done ‘as a matter of courtesy … This does not affect our discipline to our own people – and does not come under the Rubric at all.’34 Similarly, he wrote two years later: ‘I think that in such cases [communicant members of non-episcopal churches] they may be regarded as fit for Confirmation in spiritual knowledge and may therefore be admitted to Communion.’35 Clearly the rubric shaped Creighton’s views, but he still viewed the heart of Confirmation as a certificate of ‘spiritual knowledge’ – knowledge which other denominations might well convey and attest in other ways – rather than the means by which the gift of the Holy Spirit is conveyed. Creighton’s view was increasingly that of a minority. The other innovation – a full ‘two-stage’ doctrine of sacramental initiation – now burst upon the Church of England through the works of two learned Anglo-Catholic authors: F. W. Puller, What is the Distinctive Grace of Confirmation? (Rivingtons, London, 1880) and A. J. Mason, The Relation of Confirmation to Baptism (Longmans, 1891). In these the Samaritan episode of Acts 8 was expounded literally and as normative and thus became determinative of the meaning of Confirmation. In short, baptism was a preliminary cleansing, while Confirmation was the bestowal of the Spirit. Once this was asserted, it became the key to interpreting such scriptural phrases as ‘seal of the Spirit’, ‘anointing of the Spirit’, and ‘imparting a spiritual gift’. Even Jesus’ baptism by John was read as presaging this supposed apostolic ‘two-stage’ practice, for according to Luke, Jesus’ baptism was followed, as a separate event, by the coming of the Spirit. Once Acts 8 had become the key to exegesis, a vast amount of unanticipated biblical exegesis followed. All references to baptism were now understood to involve a laying on of apostolic hands accompanying the administration of the water and a new pattern and new doctrine of sacramental initiation resulted.36 Coincidentally, the Acts 8 passage duly slipped in as the (admittedly optional) Scripture reading in the 1892 revision of the American Book of Common Prayer. After the minister had presented the candidates to the bishop ‘to receive the Laying on of Hands’, the text continued: ‘Then the Bishop, or some Minister appointed by him, may say, Hear the words of the Evangelist Saint Luke, in the eighth Chapter of the Book of the Acts of the Apostles. When the apostles which were at Jerusalem … [Acts 8.14–17] … they received the Holy 34  Louise Creighton, Life and Letters of Mandell Creighton D.D., 2 vols (London: Longmans Green & Co., 1904), Vol. 2, p. 276. 35  Louise Creighton, Life and Letters of Mandell Creighton, Vol. 2, p. 282. 36  Paradoxically, this hermeneutical key could not apply to the two passages (Acts 8.14–17 and 19.1–6) which gave rise to the theory – for in them references to baptism must mean water-baptism only, and cannot carry a subliminal reference to an integral laying on of hands.

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Ghost.’ While the rite contained no explanation of the passage (and may have been included simply because it was thought right to provide a Scripture reading), it is likely that bishops’ sermons were influenced by its presence.37 More pointedly, W. H. Frere’s revision of Francis Procter’s A History of the Book of Common Prayer incorporated language that Procter himself had never used: Table 3

A comparison of two editions of A History of the Book of Common Prayer

Francis Procter, A History of the Book of Common Prayer with a Rationale of its Offices (17th edition, Longmans, 1884, but little changed from the 1st edition, 1855) ‘The custom of blessing with the outward sign of the imposition of hands is most ancient. In the Christian Church it was used, after the Apostolical practice,* and was at first the conclusion of the ministration of Baptism’a ‘Confirmation occupies an important position in the economy of the Church, which is pointed out in the last rubric, that it is admission to full Communion.’b [* A footnote says ‘Acts viii.16, 17’ and cites Blunt.]

[The former work of Francis Procter] Revised and Rewritten by Walter Howard Frere, A New History of the Book of Common Prayer with a Rationale of its Offices (Macmillan, 1901) ‘The new birth of water and the Spirit was only consummated by the laying on of apostolic hands, conveying in its fulness the gift of the Holy Ghost. This practice was in fact the essential corollary of the act of baptism … [exposition and application of Acts 8.14–17] … Elsewhere it is assumed to be an integral part of the rites of baptism practised by the apostles.’c

a F. Procter, A History of the Book of Common Prayer (17th edition, Longmans, 1884), p. 402. b Procter, A History of the Book of Common Prayer, p. 405. c F. Procter and W. H. Frere, A New History of the Book of Common Prayer (London: Macmillan, 1901), p. 557.

While Procter clearly reckoned that in the laying on of hands there was some continuity with the apostles’ practice, he neither asserted its universality nor, more significantly, expounded it as conveying the Holy Spirit. His whole emphasis in relation to contemporary use was on the ratification of baptismal 37  Marion Hatchett drily remarks, ‘The use of this lection in this manner would be defended by few New Testament scholars today’ (Commentary on the [1979] American Prayer Book, Seabury Press, 1980), p. 266.

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vows and that the outward sign is given in ‘blessing’. In Frere’s ‘rewritten’ and highly questionable exposition, however, ‘it is assumed’ that the Acts 8 passage and its ‘two-stage’ character has to be applied to all the instances of baptisms in the book of Acts. Such ‘assuming’ then encompasses the other eight separate instances of baptism in Acts, though a post-baptismal laying on of apostolic hands is reported only once (Acts 19.1–6) and is virtually impossible to read into Acts 8.36–38, and is barely more imaginable in Acts 2.41, 9.18 and 10.47–48.38 The same reservation applies to every individual reference to baptism in the letters of Paul and Peter.39 Exegetically a very thin tail was wagging a very large dog. However, not all Anglo-Catholic theologians accepted this new departure, for they detected in it too thorough an emptying of baptism of any giving of the Spirit. The merely baptized were by this doctrine left stranded and bereft, as the original Samaritans had been when Philip had ‘merely’ baptized them. So the more traditional ‘increase of grace’ still had its defenders.40 They were, however, fighting a losing battle. The doctrine associated to this day with the name of ‘Mason’ (or ‘The Mason-Dix Line’) had come to stay for three generations.41 4

The Twentieth Century: (a) Initial Understanding

By 1900, the Confirmation rubric was strongly lodged with a rigidly exclusive meaning in the corporate consciousness of the Church of England.42 Frere’s own part in this – including his re-writing of Procter – is noted above. An 38  The difficulty with this last passage – the first baptism of Gentiles – is that Peter was specifically asking that other persons should baptize the converts, without any suggestion that he would have a ‘hand’ in it himself. 39  I have explored the virtually insuperable difficulties in this standpoint in my Anglican Confirmation (Grove Liturgical Study 48, 1986) and more recently in the more succinct Baptism As Complete Sacramental Initiation (Grove Worship Series 219, 2014). 40  See, e.g., the South African A. T. Wirgman, The Doctrine of Confirmation (London: Longmans, 1897) and Darwell Stone, Holy Baptism (London: Oxford Library of Practical Theology, 1905). 41  The joining of the name of Gregory Dix to that of Mason came with two learned but perverse booklets by Dix (Confirmation, or Laying on of Hands? (Theology Occasional Papers, no.5, 1936) and The Theology of Confirmation in Relation to Baptism (London: Dacre Press, 1946)), which reinforced the Mason doctrine and extended its life. Dix is, however, beyond the purview of this essay. 42  For the text of the rubric see p. 16 above. For its interpretation in the post-1662 period see, e.g., Dalby, Open Communion, especially pp. 30–51.

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episcopal ally was G. H. Chase, Bishop of Ely (1905–24), who wrote Confirmation in the Apostolic Age (Macmillan, 1909), an (heroic!) attempt to make Scripture itself, without reference to patristic sources, tell the baptism-plusConfirmation story.43 Frere’s ‘assuming’ moved on to become, in the work of Charles Gore, Bishop successively of Worcester, Birmingham and Oxford, ‘assuring’. Writing about episcopal powers and roles, he put alongside the main text a marginal explicatory note that he was expounding the laying on of hands ‘in Confirmation’: ‘The narrative of the Acts elsewhere assures us that the Apostles laid their hands on all Christians after their baptism, in order by this means to impart to them that gift of the Holy Ghost which is the essence of the Christian life.’44 From such a scholar, such a sweeping unsustainable assertion (‘all Christians’) is breathtaking, but Gore went so far as to expound the charisma in Romans 1.11 as Confirmation – the implication of which would have had to be that for years Paul longed to visit Rome in order to administer Confirmation, for which the Roman Christians had had to wait upwards of 25 years, given that their church had been founded by pilgrims in Jerusalem on the Day of Pentecost. If the new understanding of initiation was winning ground, how stood that regarding exclusivity? In May 1901 Frederick Temple (Archbishop of Canterbury from 1897–1902) wrote: I have carefully considered the case of the Lutheran ladies who wish to Communicate in the Church of England, but not to be bound by our rule which requires that communicants should have been previously confirmed by a Bishop. I think the ladies ought to be confirmed and ought to be told so. But I am not prepared to say this ought to be enforced by exclusion from Communion … in my judgment they are doing wrong, but they would be 43  Chase somewhat naughtily quotes a memory he claims of B. F. Westcott, speaking of Tertullian in 1886, saying, ‘If Confirmation had been always properly understood, many of the controversies about Baptism would never have arisen’ (Confirmation in the Apostolic Age (Macmillan, 1909). p. x). Westcott does cite the laying on of hands as the ‘complement’ of water-baptism in his commentary on Heb. 6.1–2, but I am unaware of his developing teaching on the subject (and the Hebrews passage does not relate the gift of the Spirit to the laying on of hands). There are notes of some of his Confirmation sermons in F. C. MacDonald, A History of Confirmation (London: Skeffington, 1937), but they do not suggest that he taught a doctrine like Mason’s. 44  Charles Gore, The Church and Ministry (Longmans & Co, 4th ed revised, 1900), pp. 235–6.

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doing worse if on that account they absented themselves from the Holy Communion when they could attend it …45 This is a significant glimpse of a far-reaching transition, for where Tait would have said that the rule did not apply to guests, Temple assumed that it did apply, but on compassionate grounds was reluctant to enforce it. Temple’s charity towards the Lutherans was actually witnessing to a now agreed understanding which limited reception of Communion almost totally to the episcopally confirmed. 5

Twentieth Century: (b) The Kikuyu Controversy

The stage was now set for arguably the most momentous debates over Anglicans sharing Communion with non-episcopalians, namely the Kikuyu Controversy of 1913. Frank Weston, the Bishop of Zanzibar who denounced the Kikuyu event, neither placed emphasis on ‘two-stage’ initiation nor rested his case in any direct way upon the Confirmation rubric. The substance of his charge was that J. J. Willis, the Bishop of Uganda, had communicated Methodists and Presbyterians (and proposed to do so in the future if a federal scheme for East Africa were adopted) and that the fact of schism lay simply within the fact that they were Methodists and Presbyterians, in open severance from the apostolic ministry of the bishops. Weston sent his charge against the two bishops with a covering letter to Archbishop Randall Davidson which specified: I am the nearest Bishop to Mombasa & Uganda, & I tell you, my leader and Father-in [God], sadly that the remedy which alone will touch the disease is a public admission on their part that they have not faithfully emphasized (1) The Athanasian Creed (2) Confirmation (3) Absolution (4) Infant Baptism (5) Holy Communion as different from Communion administered in Protestant Bodies (6) The broad differences between Church Doctrine & that of the Protestant bodies, in that it is impossible 45  Letter of Frederick Temple quoted in MacDonald, A History of Confirmation, pp. 193–4.

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(a) To communicate at one another’s altars (b) To preach in one another’s pulpits (c) To prepare men of all their bodies with Church candidates either for Baptism or Ordination. and (7) the need of Episcopacy in the Church. Here Confirmation was simply listed a component of the ‘Catholic Faith’ without any doctrinal or ecclesiological interpretation of it, or any relating of it to admission to Communion. Indeed, the presence of ‘impossible’ in (6) and ‘need’ in (7) suggests that items (1) to (5), though very serious, were not actually the heart of the complaint. This was confirmed by Weston’s formal charge of heresy and schism which followed. It was heralded by 13 paragraphs, each of them introduced by a ‘whereas’ and each listing a separate iniquity in the actions and plans of the two bishops. Among them the relatively low profile of Confirmation is well exemplified in the ninth ‘whereas’, citing the actual action at Kikuyu: And whereas on the closing day of the Conference, June 21st 1913, the Holy Communion was celebrated in a Presbyterian Church at Kikuyu, British East Africa, by the aforesaid Right Reverend William, Lord Bishop of Mombasa, in the presence of the said Right Reverend John Jameson Lord Bishop of Uganda, the Sacrament being given to many members of protestant bodies whose very existence is hostile to Christ’s Holy Church. Weston would no doubt have made a strong and highly pertinent point if he had ended ‘… many members of protestant bodies who neither had been confirmed by a bishop nor were ready and desirous of being confirmed, as the rules of “Ecclesia Anglicana” require’, but he preferred to expose the whole basis of his charge – that the ‘protestant bodies’, however much they professed some kind of Christian faith, were by their ‘very existence’ in some kind of enmity against ‘Christ’s Holy Church’. Measured against this grand indictment, the Confirmation rubric was very small beer. On 29 October 1913 Weston wrote to Davidson after conversation with Bishop Willis in East Africa: The omissions are most serious – Confirmation and Absolution were not discussed … the Bishop says that … Confirmation would probably be required of those who were baptized as infants … [I beg] that the Africans may be told that Confirmation and Absolution after private confession

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are, essentially, Rites of the Church, the one never to be neglected, the other never to be condemned or despised. So here again Confirmation appears as merely an element in Weston’s concept of the Catholic Church, but without any exposition of its meaning or content. Weston came to England in February 1914 specifically to stay with Davidson and to talk over in person the Kikuyu Controversy. Davidson in turn referred the issue to the Consultative Body of the Anglican Communion for their scrutiny, which was not the judicial process desired by Weston. In his reference Davidson asked the Consultative Body’s advice as to whether the proposed Scheme contravened ‘any principles of Church Order, the observance of which is obligatory [for Anglican clergy and layworkers]’, but he did not specify Confirmation as particularly to be considered. He also asked their verdict on the actual Communion service held at Kikuyu, and here he did specify that ‘many of those who communicated were not members of the Church of England and had not been episcopally confirmed’. Early in the summer of 1914 Weston published his The Case against Kikuyu, a Study in Vital Principles (London: Longmans Green). Bell calls it the writing ‘of a man on fire, brilliant, passionate, swift, very moving’.46 In it Weston rested ‘Full Membership in the Church Catholic’ upon ‘baptism and the apostles’ fellowship’, not at that point giving Confirmation any role. He concluded with the following charge against the two offending bishops: And inviting to Communion at the Church’s altars those who have not realized, or have already refused, full and complete membership in the Church, they committed an offence not only against the Church’s order, but against the souls to whom the invitation is given. To give them Communion is to condone their present position of separation from their local Bishop in faith and worship, of which position we are bound to say that it is contrary to the divine purpose and will.47 While it could just be argued that Weston’s phrase ‘full and complete membership’ entailed Confirmation, it is more likely that he was viewing a Christian’s

46  G. K. A. Bell, Randall Davidson, Archbishop of Canterbury, 3rd edition (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1952), p. 700. 47  F. Weston, The Case against Kikuyu: A Study in Vital Principles (London: Longmans, Green, 1914), p. 33.

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membership as ‘complete’ when it was exercised in the fellowship of his or her bishop. Later in the pamphlet, Weston dealt with admission to Communion, again without mentioning Confirmation as a basis, but he finally wrote: The Church, in England as elsewhere, has always required that no one shall receive Communion who is not, generally speaking, of one mind with the Episcopate in faith and worship. Nominally, in the west, the acceptance of Confirmation serves as a test of this one-mindedness; but other tests exist. But at Kikuyu, there ‘were men and women whose lives and work are, in the measure of their holiness and power, intentionally contrary to the policy and work to which the Bishops had been sent by the Holy Ghost’. A fair reading of Weston suggests that for him Confirmation was for these purposes primarily a ‘test’, the lack of it demonstrating what he himself knew perfectly well on other grounds, namely the lack of ‘one mind with the Episcopate in faith and worship’. He gave no hint of a two-stage doctrine of sacramental initiation, and never made lack of Confirmation the grounds of his objection to either the past event at Kikuyu or the prospective federal scheme. By contrast, the Consultative Body clearly had Confirmation in mind, and its opinion reflected it: There is an undoubted rule of the Church of England that those who are to be admitted to the Holy Communion must have been ‘Confirmed, or ready and desirous to be confirmed’. In strictness this forbids admission to the Holy Communion till the requirements of the Church have been complied with; and here it should not be forgotten that the Church regards Confirmation not merely as a condition of admission to Holy Communion, but as an apostolic means of grace by which the life of the baptized is strengthened for Christian service through the Holy Spirit. On the other hand, the lack of Confirmation cannot be held, as the lack of Baptism must be held, to render a person incapable, so far as man can judge, of sacramental Communion. Thus the Consultative Body homed in on Confirmation as the qualification for receiving Communion. In doing so, it repudiated Weston’s insistence that the key issue was the relationship to the episcopate. Instead it focused on the Confirmation rubric and added a dimension of Confirmation as an

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‘apostolic means of grace’, which had not figured in Weston’s minimal references to Confirmation. Davidson reflected on the advice, and, after several months delay through the outbreak of World War I, published his own findings in early 1915. He broadly accepted the advice, refusing to condemn the actual Communion service at Kikuyu, and, with an eye to the projected scheme, he identified ‘three items of special difficulty which arise under that Scheme’. The first was the admission of non-episcopal ministers to Anglican pulpits, which he judged a local matter. In respect of the third item, he declined to advise Anglicans whether or not to receive Communion ‘at the hands of ministers not episcopally ordained’. The key issue was therefore the second item, the understanding of the Confirmation rubric. Here the Consultative Body and the Archbishop agreed that a diocesan bishop could quite properly invite other baptized Christians who were away from the ministrations of their own churches to communicate at Anglican celebrations ‘when circumstances seem to call for it’. What Davidson had done, and the Consultative Body had echoed, was to emphasize Confirmation and to make the Confirmation rubric central to the whole Controversy. This is the received view of the Controversy, but the account does not do justice to where Frank Weston had placed his emphasis. It might plausibly be suggested that the Consultative Body and Davidson, by shifting the agenda to the simple external test of Confirmation, had subtly enabled themselves neither to address nor to endorse Weston’s pejorative judgement of schism and heresy attaching to the non-episcopal Christians, and culpable complicity on the part of the two bishops. 6

The Twentieth Century: (c) Developments in England to 1920

In early twentieth-century England, Confirmation proved to have implications beyond Kikuyu. In 1903, the formation of the Representative Church Council (RCC) of the Church of England raised the question of the lay franchise. In the event, the requirement was laid down that voters were to be communicants (and male!), and were not to be members of any other Church.48 The assumption was that, a fortiori, such communicants would have been confirmed. With the commencement in 1913 of the deliberations that ultimately led to 48  See the brief account in G. K. A. Bell, Randall Davidson, pp. 402–3. An interesting followon in Bell’s account is a congratulatory letter of Gore to Davidson – i.e. Gore was delighted to find communicant status built in as the basis of the franchise, and was relieved that Davidson had so resolved it. This is important in the light of what was to come.

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the establishment of the Church Assembly in 1919, the question of qualifications for exercising the franchise in elections from the parochial church council (PCC) upwards took on a new significance. Qualified electors were declared to be parishioners who signed up to the electoral roll, stating they were actual communicants or ‘have been baptized and confirmed and are admissible to Holy Communion’, and were not members of another church.49 It is of passing interest that the alternative qualification demonstrates an awareness of a category of persons confirmed but not communicant, and these were now explicitly to be enfranchised alongside those in the previous category of ‘communicant’. However, in February 1919 the RCC debated the constitution of the projected National Assembly of the Church of England.50 It was now proposed to amend the qualifications for the electoral roll simply to require baptism, and this precipitated a heated debate on the significance of Confirmation. The major arguments advanced for not requiring Confirmation may be summarized as follows: 1. There are many churchgoing people who regularly attend Morning or Evening Prayer, but are not communicants, so have seen no point in being confirmed – but they are leading members of their local congregations (the Bishop of Southwell adding that they were often generous donors, and therefore on those grounds not be excluded); 2. As we want to affirm we are the church of the nation, we should enable our membership as near as possible to reflect the actual population of the nation; 3. We do not want to sound too exclusive to Methodists; 4. As we are allowing women to take their place as responsible laypeople, if we make Confirmation requisite for the electoral roll, the prevalence of women among Confirmation candidates will build in a great majority of women upon the electoral roll (an outcome much to be avoided).51 Such views were supported by John Diggle, the Bishop of Carlisle, who, having heard that a Confirmation qualification would enfranchise those with some knowledge of the faith and mature discipleship, responded that he doubted 49   Report of the Archbishops’ Committee on Church and State (London: SPCK, 1916), p. 41. 50  It is common knowledge that, as recommended in the church and state report, the Church authorities did not want the state to create a Church governing body; and therefore the plan was that the Convocations would create the body, and Parliament would confer powers on it – hence the shorthand title of the legislation concerned, the ‘Enabling Act’. 51  It will be recalled that this was coincident with the Westminster Parliament voting for votes for women, and the RCC had agreed it must go with that tide, but clearly there were great apprehensions as to what the coming of the women would imply.

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whether the large numbers of 12-year-olds he was confirming were distinguishable from the unconfirmed in these respects. Meanwhile Bishop Gore watched these trends with what one imagines to be growing horror and subsequently rose to propound an actual theology of Confirmation: Through the labours of Father Puller and Canon Mason and (I lay special stress on this) through the book of the Bishop of Ely [Chase] who is away ill, there has come about an extraordinary change which has affected, I venture to say, all Confirmation addresses and Confirmation instruction more radically than almost any other department of our Church life has been affected. We have come to understand that the real meaning of Confirmation is the bestowal of exactly that gift of the Holy Spirit, which qualifies for effective membership …52 Gore’s argument was that since the unconfirmed are not properly initiated Christians, it would be absurd to make them the basic electorate for church government, but his was a losing proposition and the amendment for solely a baptismal qualification ultimately prevailed. While all those elected to parochial, diocesan and national bodies had to be confirmed and to state they were not members of other Churches not in Communion with the Church of England, any baptized parishioner, whether or not attending church or a communicant, could join the electoral roll and vote in the election of PCC members. To Gore this was near apostasy – a Church failing to defend what it is to be the Church – and he resigned the See of Oxford. The RCC’s decision was duly incorporated into the structure of the National Assembly of the Church of England and to this day the baptismal franchise suffices for inclusion on a parochial electoral roll. In his speech to the RCC, Gore went on to support his doctrine by asserting that ‘[those] who have passed proposals for a revised alternative Book of Common Prayer have agreed to substitute a new preface … in order to impress this doctrine formally, and apart from any address which may be given, upon candidates’. Sure enough, the ‘Answer’ of the Convocations to the Royal Letters of Business, as contained in report 517 of November 1918, included a lengthy insertion into the Confirmation service.53 Whereas 1662 52  Representative Church Council, Report of Proceedings, 26 February 1919. 53  This is the report which contained the catholic-evangelical compromise over the Canon of the Communion service (devised by Frere and Drury), and it is that which has commanded all the historical attention. It is unclear who took steps to amplify the Confirmation rite, and certainly there has been little historical interest in it.

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had no passage of Scripture and made no attempt to provide a doctrine of Confirmation, the new insertion did: Table 4

1918 insertion into the confirmation rite

Upon the day appointed, all that are then to be confirmed, being placed, and standing in order before the Bishop; he (or some other Minister appointed by him) shall read this Preface following, unless he shall otherwise determine. Dearly beloved in the Lord, in ministering Confirmation the Church doth follow the example of the Apostles of Christ. For in the eighth chapter of the Acts of the Apostles we thus read: – They therefore that [8.4–5, 12, 14–17] Now when the apostles … received the Holy Ghost. Holy Scripture doth here teach us that in Confirmation there is an inward grace and an outward sign. The inward grace is the strengthening gift of the Holy Spirit. And, forasmuch as this gift cometh from God alone, we here present shall make our supplication to Almighty God, as the Apostles did, that he will pour forth his Holy Spirit upon those who in Baptism were made his children by adoption and grace. The outward sign is the laying on of hands, which to those who rightly receive it is a strong assurance and an effectual token that what they truly seek is indeed bestowed upon them by their heavenly Father.

Furthermore, to the end that this congregation may be certified that you who are now to be confirmed are steadfastly purposed to lead a holy life in the faith of Christ and in obedience to God’s will and commandments, and that you yourselves may have always printed in your remembrance what your duties are and how greatly you need the heavenly assistance of the Holy Spirit, the Church hath thought good to order that. Before you receive the laying on of hands, you shall openly acknowledge yourselves bound to fulfil the Christian duties to which your Baptism hath pledged you. Then shall the Bishop say Do ye here &c, [‘confirming’ being altered to ‘confessing’]. [Then come the three Prayer Book baptismal questions of repentance, faith and obedience with the candidates’ responses of ‘I do’ ‘I do’ ‘I will’.]

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By whatever means this text was drafted and included, it was not where the centre of interest lay within the total set of proposals. It did, however, testify to a reviving doctrine of Confirmation as an integral Spirit-related element in sacramental initiation. Softer than the Puller-Mason-Chase proposals, it seems to have gathered across-the-board support at the conferences which led to the ‘Answer’, forwarded by the Convocations in April 1920. Furthermore, it survived in principle throughout the whole painful path to 1928, though, as inspection of the 1928 ‘Deposited Book’ will show, the text was amended by the House of Bishops, and the doctrinal statement now became the somewhat tougher: ‘The Scripture here teacheth us that a special gift of the Holy Spirit is bestowed through the laying on of hands with prayer.’54 Confirmation was also of some interest to the 1920 Lambeth Conference.55 The famous ‘An Appeal to All Christian People’ on behalf of reunion included a slightly changed version of the 1888 Lambeth Quadrilateral in which the fourth provision read: ‘A ministry acknowledged by every part of the Church as possessing not only the inward call of the Spirit, but also the commission of Christ and the authority of the whole body.’56 There followed by long presentation of the historic episcopate as ‘the best instrument for maintaining the unity and continuity of the Church.’ The paragraph concluded: ‘Nay more, we eagerly look forward to the day when through its acceptance in a united Church we may all share in that grace which is pledged to the members of the

54  The later history is that the 1928 text was taken up almost universally by the bishops (perhaps because of the threefold baptismal vows as much as because of the use of Acts 8) and it ran strongly until 1966, and I was myself confirmed by a bishop using this notquite-legal rite in 1956. However, when the 1928 services were converted into ‘Series One’, to be authorized under the ‘Alternative Services Measure’ in June 1966, the House of Laity denied it the requisite two-thirds majority (largely because of its handling of the Acts 8 passage), and it perished. 55  It will be recalled that the 1892 American Book of Common Prayer (see p. 28 above), still in use in 1920, printed the Acts 8 passage, though without introduction or explanation. By 1920 the Canadian revision of 1918 was also in use, containing some slight teaching about Confirmation preceding the reading of Acts 8.4–17, Acts 19.1–7 and Heb. 5.12–6.3. The only other official variant on 1662 before 1920 of which I am aware was a provision by Canon in the Episcopal Church of Scotland to use the threefold baptismal vows and (optionally) to add the 1549 formula at the laying on of the hand prior to the 1662 one, a provision printed in the 1912 first Book of Common Prayer of that Church (since 1637) as an ‘Alternative Order of Confirmation’ – and this provision did not include Acts 8 or any other Scripture. 56  For the original 1888 text, see p. 27 above.

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whole body in the apostolic rite of the laying-on of hands [and in sharing in the Eucharist].’57 The doctrinal content was no nearer Puller and Mason than the proposed liturgical text was, but the ‘grace … pledged to the members of the whole body’ betrayed a set of exegetical assumptions about the Acts of the Apostles, as well as coming near to insisting on episcopal Confirmation as a sine qua non for ecumenical progress. 7 Conclusion By 1920, the direction of Anglican Confirmation in terms both of ecumenical exclusivity and two-stage sacramental initiation was well set. One element in the Puller-Mason package, an element which awaited Dix and his contemporaries for widespread adoption, was the insistence that water-baptism and Confirmation should properly be administered within a single rite (though still with their separable symbolisms and meaning). Most of the discussion above treats Confirmation as a discrete sacramental sign with its own identifiable role; and putting the two ceremonies into one rite would have meant either delaying initiating infants until they reached the then current age for Confirmation or administering Confirmation to newly baptized infants, and neither of these possibilities ever captured the Anglican imagination or affected episcopal policies. How baptism and Confirmation then became first a more clearly ‘two-stages-in-one-rite’ ambition in the 1940s, and then started a slow collapse as an ambition in the decades after 1970 awaits another chronicler.

57  The Lambeth Conference 1920, Resolution 9 on ‘Reunion of Christendom’ adopting ‘An Appeal to All Christian people’ in which the Lambeth Quadrilateral is paragraph VI and the paragraph quoted here is VII.

Chapter 2

Confirmation and Figuration in the Thornton–Lampe Debate Jeff Boldt Lionel S. Thornton (1884–1960) was well known in his day as a philosophical theologian in the liberal-catholic camp. A member of the Community of the Resurrection (CR), Thornton ‘was moving to the front rank of contemporary theologians’1 in the 1920s with his contribution to Essays Catholic and Critical and with the monumental The Incarnate Lord, a volume that Michael Ramsey called ‘one of the most notable works of the half-century’.2 A widely recognized leader among Anglo-Catholics, Thornton was also an early appointment to the Church of England’s Doctrine Commission (1922–38) which was set up after the controversial Conference of the Modern Churchmen’s Union at Girton College, Cambridge, in 1921 threatened to divide the Church over the question of Christ’s divinity.3 Yet Thornton published almost nothing between 1932 and 1942. When he returned to writing, his theological approach had become primarily biblical and his concerns were mostly sacramental and ecclesial. Along with other prominent Anglo-Catholics – Austin Farrer, T. S. Eliot, A. G. Hebert, and Michael Ramsey – Archbishop Fisher included Thornton in another working group in 1945 to discuss reconciliation between Protestant and Catholic traditions. His work garnered a lot of attention, but other theologians increasingly criticized his figural method of interpretation. In contrast to contemporary doctrines of Scripture that parsed divine content from human forms, Thornton made the two inseparable. His ‘typological’ method drew spiritual meaning from every ‘jot and tittle’ of the Bible and was justified 1  Michael Ramsey, ‘Lionel Thornton: Theologian’, in Lionel Spencer Thornton, The Common Life in the Body of Christ, 4th edition (London: Dacre Press, 1963), p. vii. 2  Michael Ramsey, An Era in Anglican Theology: From Gore to Temple: The Development of Anglican Theology Between Lux Mundi and the Second World War, 1889–1939 (New York: Scribners, 1960), p. 107. Thornton, ‘The Christian Concept of God’, in E. G. Selwyn (ed.), Essays Catholic & Critical (New York: Macmillan, 1926), pp. 121–50; Thornton, The Incarnate Lord: An Essay Concerning the Doctrine of the Incarnation in Its Relations to Organic Conceptions (London and New York: Longmans, Green & Co., 1928). 3  Doctrine in the Church of England (1938): The Report of the Commission on Christian Doctrine Appointed by the Archbishops of Canterbury and York (London: SPCK, 1982). See Michael Ramsey, An Era in Anglican Theology: From Gore to Temple, pp. 69–70.

© koninklijke brill nv, leiden, 2019 | doi:10.1163/9789004388680_004

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by a doctrine of the Incarnation in which the Word humbly bound himself to the lowliest details of the text. An early object of scorn was Thornton’s figural defence of the episcopate, ‘The Body of Christ in the New Testament’, but the real breaking point seemed to follow his somewhat polemical Confirmation: Its Place in the Baptismal Mystery.4 Thornton is of interest in the study of Anglican sacramental contestation less for his conventional doctrine of apostolic succession, which made him (and the whole of the Community of the Resurrection at that time)5 an opponent of reunion schemes with non-episcopal churches at home and abroad, than because his emphasis on the episcopate as the necessary basis for sacramental validity led him to doubt the efficacy of Free Church baptisms since they could not be completed by the episcopal seal at Confirmation – a step further than even Roman Catholic theologians would allow. Though later qualified, his initial position was that the Holy Spirit only came through episcopal Confirmations: ‘Unconfirmed Christians, it would seem, have not yet entered into the full mercies of the covenant; for they have not yet received that “first instalment” of the indwelling Spirit which prepares us for the day of our final redemption.’6 G. W. H. Lampe (1912–1980), the distinguished liberalevangelical editor of A Patristic Greek Lexicon, understood precisely what was at stake.7 A respected churchman even when championing unpopular causes like the ordination of women, Lampe was an ecumenical participant in the Anglo-Scandinavian conferences.8 In response to the position taken up by Thornton and by others like Gregory Dix, and earlier by A. J. Mason and F. W. Puller (Thornton’s uncle), Lampe wrote The Seal of the Spirit: A Study in the Doctrine of Baptism and Confirmation in the New Testament and the Fathers.9 4  Thornton, ‘The Body of Christ in the New Testament’, in Kenneth Kirk (ed.), The Apostolic Ministry: Essays on the History and the Doctrine of Episcopacy (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1946), pp. 53–112; Thornton, Confirmation: Its Place in the Baptismal Mystery (London: Dacre Press, 1954). See Stephen Neill, ‘A General Survey’, in The Ministry of the Church : A Review by various authors of a book entitled ‘Apostolic Ministry’ (London: Canterbury Press, 1947), pp. 8–9. 5  Alan Wilkinson, The Community of the Resurrection: A Centenary History (London: SCM Press, 1992), p. 261. 6  Thornton, Confirmation Today (Westminster: Dacre Press, 1946), p. 9. 7  G. W. H. Lampe (ed.), A Patristic Greek Lexicon (Oxford  and New York: Oxford University Press, 1969). 8  Maurice Wiles, ‘Lampe, Geoffrey William Hugo (1912–1980)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004) at: http://ezproxy-prd.bodleian.ox.ac .uk:2167/view/article/31331, accessed 15 Aug 2017. 9  Gregory Dix, The Theology Of Confirmation In Relation To Baptism (Westminster: Dacre Press, 1946); Arthur James Mason, The Relation Of Confirmation To Baptism As Taught In Holy Scripture And The Fathers (London: Longmans, 1893); F. W. Puller, What Is The Distinctive

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In his original introduction he states that if Thornton’s position were taken up, ‘at a stroke the whole basis of the oecumenical movement for the unity of Christendom would be shattered…. [O]n Thornton’s view no non-episcopal body, and no church whose bishops cannot claim to represent the “apostolic ministry”, possesses the Holy Spirit …’.10 Extreme as Thornton’s position was, he had reasons for caution in the face of what he saw to be potential lowestcommon-denominator reunion schemes. This stemmed from his doctrine of revelation, which was a protest against theologies that failed to organically relate the whole of Christian doctrine, particularly that pertaining to creation, Scripture, ministry and the sacraments. Revealed religion, he argued, is holistic not atomistic. Nevertheless, Lampe lived to see his position prevail at the General Synod in 1970. His doctrine of Confirmation, of Scripture, and his limited use of ‘typology’ were more palatable to theologians and churchmen alike (his advocacy for what he called ordained ‘churchwomen’ would bear fruit in 1994, fourteen years after his death). Burkhard Eric Steinberg has exhaustively discussed the details of the Confirmation controversy between Lampe and the Anglo-Catholics.11 There is very little that I could add to his study except to clarify two issues that commentators on Thornton have been peculiarly unable to sort out, namely, his and Lampe’s rival doctrines of Scripture and figural reading. Indeed, Protestant and Catholic visions of Anglicanism have, since the time of Newman,12 often been framed as a rivalry between ‘Antiochene’ and ‘Alexandrian’ views on figural exegesis – the former ‘Liberal’ position cautiously admitting only a    Grace Of Confirmation? (Rivingtons, 1880); G. W. H. Lampe, The Seal Of The Spirit: A Study In The Doctrine Of Baptism And Confirmation In The New Testament And The Fathers (New York: Longmans, 1951). 10  Lampe, The Seal of The Spirit, p. xiii. 11  Burkhard Eric Steinberg, ‘The Relation Of Confirmation To Baptism: A Mid-Twentieth Century Debate In The Church Of England’, PhD dissertation, University of St Michael’s College, Toronto 1999. 12  Newman writes: ‘It may almost be laid down as an historical fact, that the mystical [Alexandrian] interpretation and orthodoxy will stand or fall together’: John Henry Newman, The Arians of the Fourth Century (revised edition, Leominster: Gracewing Publishing, 2001), p. 405. This comes in his Appendix on ‘The Syrian School of Theology’ where he states that the Antiochene school was devoted to ‘the literal and critical interpretation of Scripture’ and that ‘it gave rise first to the Arian and then to the Nestorian heresy’ (p. 404). Newman repeats some traditional tropes about Theodore of Mopsuestia (pp. 408–9), whose works, known then only in short excerpts, had yet to be rediscovered. For the history of Theodore research see Frederick McLeod, Theodore of Mopsuestia (London and New York: Routledge, 2008), ch. 2. For the history of Nestorius research see Carl E Braaten, ‘Modern Interpretations of Nestorius’, Church History 32.3 (1963), pp. 251–67.

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limited ‘typological’ method, and the latter ‘Catholic’ position being enthusiastically drawn into allegedly subjective ‘allegory’. Although Ramsey mentions that Thornton had been painted with the ‘Apollinarian’ brush,13 Thornton fails to fit this mould.14 For while he was best versed in the ante-Nicene Fathers (Clement, Origen, Justin, and so on), the main influence on him was Irenaeus of Lyon. Indeed, Thornton’s project is remarkably reminiscent of Maximus the Confessor’s, whose writings only began to be discussed in English in the 1950s. Thornton’s was a totally different affirmation of the humanity of Christ from Modernists such as Charles Raven (1885–1964) who, unlike Maximus (and in confirmation of Newman’s linkage of Arianism and Nestorianism), taught that Christ could only have one – human and not divine – will.15 Raven here minted a heresiological category that was applied to those who held to a traditional ‘Cyrillian’ Christology for a while after. Charles Raven came under the influence of Thornton’s contemporary, J. F. Bethune-Baker, the leader of the Modern Churchmen’s Union, from whom he learned to read the Fathers and to reject the traditional Christology of St Cyril. Perhaps in opposition to Newman’s valorization of Alexandrian theology in Arians, Raven and BethuneBaker rediscovered Theodore of Mopsuestia and Nestorius as Antiochene sources that allegedly took Christ’s humanity together with historical exegesis seriously. Bethune-Baker had early on registered his agreement with the traditional opinion that Nestorius taught a two-person Christology. Yet with the discovery of Nestorius’s Apologia,16 Bethune-Baker changed course to argue that Nestorius was not a Nestorian.17 Also in 1908 Raven was defending a dissertation called Apollinarianism under the supervision of G. M. Gwatkin, who had originally sparked his interest in the topic when he told Raven: ‘Apollinarianism is the prevalent heresy of to-day: why don’t you make a study of it?’18 Raven’s thesis was published only in 1923 and it was notable for doing for Theodore of Mopsuestia what Bethune-Baker had done for the other heresiarch. As Friedrick Loofs (1858–1928) furthered Bethune-Baker’s thesis to argue that the whole orthodox tradition was heretical and that Nestorius was orthodox,19 13  Ramsey, ‘Lionel Thornton: Theologian’, p. viii. 14  Thornton already took account of this critique in The Incarnate Lord, pp. 262–3. 15  See Charles E. Raven, Apollinarianism: An Essay on the Christology of the Early Church (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1923). 16  Nestorius, Apologia, The Bazaar of Heracleides, trans. G. R. Driver and Leonard Hodgson (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1925). 17  See Bethune-Baker, Nestorius and His Teaching: A Fresh Examination of the Evidence (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1908). 18  Raven, Apollinarianism, p. vii. 19  Braaten, ‘Modern Interpretations of Nestorius’, p. 256.

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Raven did so with Theodore, who was the source of Nestorius’ Christology. Indeed, Raven claimed that Apollinaris of Laodicea – on his reading something of a crypto-Alexandrian – was scapegoated so that the ‘orthodox’ Fathers could retain his teaching in an only slightly altered form (there being no difference between an incarnate mind and incarnate person to Raven).20 Theodore, who was an opponent of Apollinarius, was, however, rejected by the orthodox even though Raven thought he was the best alternative to Apollinarius, Cyril, and the Neo-Chalcedonians, Leontius of Byzantium and John Damascene.21 To be sure, Nestorianism was on the radar of Church Missionary Society and Society for the Propagation of the Gospel missionaries as early as 1841 when they began to make contact first with Chaldean (Roman uniate) and then Assyrian (contemporary names for historic ‘Nestorian’) Christians in Mesopotamia. Under the influence of William Palmer of Magdalen College, Oxford – more famous for his Russian Orthodox contacts – the previous CMS missionaries Percy Badger and Christian Rassam (himself a Chaldean) became strident Tractarians whose goal was to persuade Chaldeans to break with Rome and refuse help from American evangelical missionaries, and to persuade Assyrians to drop Nestorius from their liturgies. In fact, the CMS missionaries’ political meddling may have had something to do with the Kurdish massacre of Assyrians in 1843. Badger was more accommodating of Nestorian formulations than Palmer, J. M. Neale, and Thornton’s uncle, F. W. Puller, who wanted assurances that they accepted the Council of Ephesus and Chalcedon. Luckily the partisan engagements of Tractarians were moderated when the Archbishop of Canterbury officially authorised a commendable mission to the Assyrians, though it was not terribly successful. Nevertheless, it is within this context that Bethune-Baker’s re-evaluation of Nestorius was made. Indeed his book Nestorius and His Teaching begins with Archbishop Benson’s prayer for the Mission.22 Building on this background, this chapter looks at how sacramental debate was hindered by the conflict between these two anachronistically-defined 20  Raven, Apollinarianism, pp. 273–4. 21  For Lampe’s take on the Antiochenes see ‘The Exposition and Exegesis of Scripture: To Gregory the Great’, in The Cambridge History of the Bible, Vol. 1, ed. G. W. H. Lampe (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1969), pp. 177–8. The tradition of Anglican defenders of Theodore and Nestorius carried on through Maurice F. Wiles, ‘Theodore of Mopsuestia as a Representative of the Antiochene School’, in P. R. Ackroyd and C. F. Evans (eds), The Cambridge History of the Bible, Volume 1, From Beginnings to Jerome (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1970) and Rowan A. Greer, Theodore of Mopsuestia: Exegete and Theologian (London: Faith Press, 1961). 22  See J. F. Coakley, The Church of the East and the Church of England: A History of the Archbishop of Canterbury’s Assyrian Mission (New York: Oxford University Press, 1992).

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styles of figural reading. It assesses how and why Lampe failed to come to grips with the force of Thornton’s biblicism, and also why what I believe to be Thornton’s incorrect sacramental conclusions nevertheless did not invalidate his hermeneutical method, even though the latter needed further clarification. Thornton is unusual in that his greatest work, Revelation in the Modern World, is probably the most comprehensive articulation of the logic of biblical unity and figural hermeneutics in the Anglican tradition.23 More than a historian of exegesis like de Lubac or Daniélou, Thornton actually practised what he preached. Indeed, the large body of writings published between The Common Life in the Body of Christ in 1942 and Christ and the Church in 1956 represents the major example of figural exegesis in twentieth century theology.24 Perhaps predictably, given his catholic sacramental-sectarianism, however, this achievement has been under-appreciated. What Lampe found troubling about Thornton’s exegesis was twofold. On the one hand Thornton was using his ‘typological’ exegesis to establish doctrines that Lampe found unbiblical – a catholic doctrine of episcopacy, and a radical doctrine of Confirmation.25 On the other hand, his typological method needed to include a criterion by which Lampe and others could objectively judge between legitimate and illegitimate typological readings.26 As a general rule, Lampe viewed diachronic, ‘typological’ readings as valid and synchronic, ‘allegorical’ readings of the Old Testament as invalid, yet he only wrote a few dozen pages on his own theory of typology, and failed to comment on Revelation and the Modern World in a sustained way.27 I would argue that his inability to appreciate Thornton’s hermeneutics ran deeper than merely sacramental 23  L. S. Thornton, Revelation and the Modern World, Being the First Part of a Treatise on the Form of the Servant (London: Dacre Press, 1950). 24  For the most notable examples of his exegesis see Thornton, The Common Life in the Body of Christ (London: Dacre Press, 1942); Thornton, ‘The Choice Of Matthias’, The Journal of Theological Studies 46 (1945), pp. 181–2; pp. 51–59; Thornton, ‘The Body of Christ in the New Testament’; ‘The Mother of God in Holy Scripture’, in Eric L. Mascall (ed.), The Mother of God: A Symposium by Members of the Fellowship of St. Alban and St. Sergius (Westminster: Dacre Press, 1949); Thornton, The Dominion of Christ, Being the Second Part of a Treatise on The Form of the Servant (London: Dacre Press, 1952); Thornton, Christ and the Church, Being the Third Part of a Treatise on The Form of the Servant (London: Dacre Press, 1956). 25  G. W. H. Lampe, ‘The Reasonableness of Typology’, in Geoffrey Lampe and Kenneth Woollcombe (eds), Essays on Typology (London: SCM Press, 1957), pp. 20–21. 26  Lampe, ‘The Reasonableness of Typology’, p. 21. 27  Lampe, ‘The Reasonableness of Typology’, p. 33; see also G. W. H. Lampe, ‘Typological Exegesis’, Theology 56, no. 396 (June 1953): pp. 201–8, doi:10.1177/0040571X5305639601; Lampe, ‘The Exposition and Exegesis of Scripture: To Gregory the Great’.

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politics; Thornton had articulated exactly what was wrong with Lampe’s own hermeneutics, and Lampe did not have an answer. In this debate, figural exegesis needs to be disentangled from denominationsectarian self-assertion in order to be understood. The question posed in this chapter is whether we can disagree with Thornton’s un-ecumenical sacramental conclusions while generally agreeing with his figural method. Though Lampe was correct in arguing that Thornton failed to establish his doctrine of Confirmation from Scripture, he nevertheless failed to demonstrate that Thornton’s figural method was the cause of his doctrinal problems. It is possible to draw incorrect figural conclusions without calling into question the whole hermeneutic in the same way that one might come to incorrect conclusions using biblical criticism without ‘throwing the baby out with the bathwater’. Lampe, of course, did not want to throw out typology, but his explication of the method leaves much to be desired. My intention here is to show first what is right with Thornton’s hermeneutics and what is wrong with Lampe’s. I then proceed to summarize their positions on Confirmation, examine the problems in Thornton’s account and ask whether they discredit Thornton’s figural approach. Finally, I briefly examine Thornton’s exegetical account of apostolic succession in ‘The Body of Christ in the New Testament’ to see whether it implies the kind of de facto ecumenical stalemate sought by the Anglo-Catholics in Thornton’s camp. I conclude by showing that Thornton’s figural portrait of the apostolic ministry actually provides an ecumenically hopeful alternative to episcopal doctrines driven by validity alone. 1

The Reasonableness of Typology According to Lampe and Thornton

By the mid 1930s the tenor of Anglican theology had begun to change from the apologetic posture of most Modernist and ‘orthodox’ projects to something much more focused on the unity of Scripture and the integrity of Christian witness. Illustrative of this transition was Edwyn Hoskyns’ chapter in Essays Catholic and Critical – probably the most influential contribution to the volume.28 His translation of Karl Barth’s commentary on Romans, and his brief teaching career at Cambridge before his untimely death in 1937 established him as the most revolutionary and inspiring voice in Anglican biblical

28  Edwyn C. Hoskyns, ‘The Christ of the Synoptic Gospels’, in Essays Catholic & Critical, ed. E. G. Selwyn (New York: Macmillan Co., 1926).

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studies in the interwar period.29 But as Packer suggests, there was no consensus on the kind of biblical unity implied by his approach of reading the Bible ‘from within.’30 ‘Fundamentalism’ with its claim to a pyramid of propositional biblical truths was obviously not an option, so a broadly ‘neo-orthodox’ position developed that identified the word of God with God’s punctiliar actions in salvation-history. ‘Events’ became the content of revelation. The ‘neo’ aspect of this orthodoxy, represented in a mature form by Reginald H. Fuller, was the careful way in which it denied that ‘the human words [of Scripture] came directly from God’.31 Only the second person of the Trinity was properly the Word, and all human speech was witness to his unique intervention in history.32 Biblical unity was not to be found in the words themselves. As Lampe wrote in describing pre-critical exegesis, ‘the unity of the Bible was the fundamental premise upon which all were agreed.’33 If the development of biblical criticism, however, was to place a new emphasis on the diversity of the writings, unity would have to be found elsewhere.34 In order to justify a limited practice of typology, Lampe had to explain of what biblical unity consisted, since what was at stake was the Church’s ability to receive the Old Testament as Scripture.35 Uncontroversially, he agreed with Thornton that there is a common Hebrew cultural inheritance in both Testaments, and that certain ways of thinking – particularly the odd typological methods of interpretation utilized by the prophets and apostles – are not historically unintelligible.36 The most significant level of unity, however, is the thematic unity shared by the biblical books, which exhibit a common covenant-history theme or story arch. Put differently, God’s acts in history exhibit a certain pattern.37 29  Karl Barth, The Epistle to the Romans, trans. E. C. Hoskyns, 6th edition (London: Oxford University Press, 1995). 30  J. I. Packer, The Collected Shorter Writings of J. I. Packer, Vol. 4 (Carlisle, Cumbria: Paternoster Press, 1998), pp. 325–7. Hoskyns’ approach was a step in the right direction. But for Packer, he and Barth could not be fully endorsed by evangelicals because they were not clear on verbal inspiration. 31  Reginald H. Fuller, ‘Scripture,’ in Stephen Sykes, John Booty and Jonathan Knight (eds), The Study of Anglicanism, revised edition (London: SPCK, 1998), p. 89. 32  Fuller, ‘Scripture’, pp. 90–91. 33  Lampe, ‘The Reasonableness of Typology’, p. 14. 34  Lampe, ‘The Reasonableness of Typology’, pp. 15, 17. 35  Lampe, ‘The Reasonableness of Typology’, p. 17. 36  Lampe, ‘The Reasonableness of Typology’, pp. 18–19. 37  Lampe, ‘The Reasonableness of Typology’, pp. 24–26. David Kelsey broadly typologizes this narrative, event-based view of biblical authority in chapter 3 of The Uses of Scripture in Recent Theology (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1975). ‘Indeed, there has been a widespread consensus in Protestant theology in the past four decades that the “revelation” to

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If we admit the unity of Scripture in the sense that it is the literature of people whose thought was controlled by a single series of images, and that it is a body of writings whose explicit or implicit theme throughout is the people and the Covenant, and if, further, we hold that Christ is the unifying centre-point of Biblical history, deliberately fulfilling the various images presented by that literature and bringing together different threads within it to form a consistent pattern, then we can have no objection to a typology which seeks to discover and make explicit the real correspondences in historical events which have been brought about by the recurring rhythm of divine activity. We cannot object to this, unless, indeed, we are willing to ‘demythologize’ very freely.38 Such a view denied the verbal inspiration of the Bible and, therefore, rejected types that rely upon ‘verbal similarities’ and ‘verbal associations’ between books as ‘jugglery with words and etymologies’.39 Lampe, therefore, found fault with the Apostles, the Fathers, and Thornton himself. Given the fact that human words only make sense in their ‘historical’ context, it could only be pure chance when biblical writers separated by ages unknowingly echo each other. It was wrong to come to doctrinal conclusions based on correspondences that ought at best to be used for rhetorical effect in sermons.40 But can we really believe that Lampe adequately described the method of the Apostles and Fathers with the facile explanation of subjective fancy? And why did he not comment on Thornton’s sophisticated hermeneutical writing? To be sure he admitted that ‘quasi-Platonist’ metaphysics lay behind the synchronic figural correspondences he found so distasteful in Hebrews. He even admitted that this is not a Greek perversion, but a native Hebrew approach. But he failed to address the phenomenological justification for this way of thinking: the fact of sameness-in-difference. If one rejects the monist-atomist answer that sameness-in-difference is epiphenomenal, then one has taken the first step towards Platonism (and you do not even have to be Greek to make this move!). For, when Lampe claimed that there are ‘real correspondences’ in the saving events of history, he made a metaphysical claim that he then failed

which scripture attests is a self-manifestation of God in historical events, and not information about God stated in divinely communicated doctrines or concepts’ (p. 32). For the latest edition see David H. Kelsey, Proving Doctrine: The Uses Of Scripture In Modern Theology (Harrisburg, PA: Trinity Press International, 1999). 38  Lampe, ‘The Reasonableness of Typology’, p. 29. 39  Lampe, ‘The Reasonableness of Typology’, pp. 36–38. 40  Lampe, ‘The Reasonableness of Typology’, p. 35.

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to follow through.41 His readers are left to ask: by virtue of what does the sameness consist? His answer could only be that saving events exhibit a similarity due to a common cause, God. And if Christ is God, then the typical theological objection to the ‘unearthly’ character of Platonism is silenced as the ‘forms’ are radically historicized in the figure of the Incarnate Lord. It is characteristic of Platonism that the relationship of historical shadows to their forms is logical and not temporal and applies even in the Christian universe where the forms are Christologically construed. Thus Lampe, who admitted the difficulty of applying his criterion of legitimacy to the synchronic Christological ‘allegories’ (his word for illegitimate figures) of Hebrews, but who nevertheless parsed them into tidy piles, was out of his element. He had simply neither understood the logic and metaphysics of ‘allegory’ (which can be the only reason why he failed to comment on Thornton’s hermeneutics), nor had he discovered a criterion of legitimacy to prohibit it. Furthermore, if ‘real correspondences’ are the work of God, and God is the Creator, then divine correspondences will be found not only between historical events but between all creatures – things, qualities, attributes, persons, words.42 The correspondence between the scarlet cord of Rahab at Jericho and the blood of Christ, which Lampe rejected as ‘plainly unreal and artificial’, is obviously a possibility.43 Either ‘correspondences’ are ‘real’ and quasi-Platonism follows, or correspondences are epiphenomenal and monistic-atomistic metaphysics follow. What stands out about Thornton’s figural exegesis is precisely his belief in ‘verbal associations’, a corollary of his biblical metaphysics. This belief in the equal inspiration of the whole Scripture led his critics regularly to slur him as a ‘fundamentalist’, but an honest understanding of fundamentalism shows that it actually shares a common apologetic motive with Lampe: fundamentalists just as often reject allegory because it cannot prove doctrine, for the Bible

41  Lampe, ‘The Reasonableness of Typology’, p. 30. For monists, difference is epiphenomenal, while for atomists sameness is epiphenomenal. 42  My hunch is that the artificial separation between typology and allegory made by Lampe and others in the twentieth century may have influenced Peter Harrison to anachronistically see this distinction already at work in the sixteenth century Reformers. His thesis that the literal reading of Scripture affected the literal (i.e. mechanistic) reading of nature is probably overstated. Surely Protestants were not consistently illogical for the past five centuries in opposing divinely caused events to created things as texts meant for figural reading. And yet Thornton would agree with Harrison that mechanism was the consequence of the Reformation. It is just that Thornton places the emphasis on division as the cause of this hermeneutical devolution. Peter Harrison, The Bible, Protestantism, and the Rise of Natural Science (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1998). 43  Lampe, ‘The Reasonableness of Typology’, p. 33.

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is for them a book of literal proof-texts.44 Types and symbols, in order to be polemically useful, must be shown to be intended by the biblical author, as Lampe would have agreed.45 On a more positive note the inerrant perspicuity of Scripture is also meant to aid obedience. Here so-called fundamentalists actually find common cause with Thornton whose patristic allegories were meant to kindle piety, though in Thornton’s case, and in contrast to the fundamentalist, the hiddenness of the figures is what enflames the heart.46 Lampe, however, explicitly rejected ‘edification’ as a criterion of a good biblical figure.47 Yet, as I will argue, this was the most promising aspect of Thornton’s figural approach to the sacraments. One problem in Thornton’s presentation of his figural hermeneutics is the potentially confusing place of authorial intent. Lampe and conservative biblicists were agreed that biblical symbols must be conventional and intentional and Thornton seemed to concur. The biblical authors, he stated, had a peculiar way of thinking about symbolic linkages that mattered for a historical 44  Lampe, ‘The Reasonableness of Typology’, p. 20. 45  Lampe, ‘The Reasonableness of Typology’, p. 31; In his early unpublished lectures on the typological reading of Scripture, E. B. Pusey identified the apologetic use of typology as one of the major weaknesses of orthodoxy over against German criticism. Although the prediction of future events was supposed to be compelling to rationalists, Pusey argued that the deeper a type is the less useful it will be as a proof. The deeper the type, the more it calls forth virtue in the interpreter. As the old Platonic saying goes, ‘like attracts like.’ George Westerhaver sums up Pusey’s issue: ‘The emphasis on prophecy as prediction, and the goal of using prophecy as a form of evidence to convince outsiders leads to a focus on the form of prophecy and the neglect of its content or substance. Pusey suggests that, paradoxically, a treatment of prophecy which is meant to establish its veracity undermines the capacity of readers or seekers to see what prophecy reveals. Pusey follows S. T. Coleridge in drawing attention to William Paley as the representative of the confusions and dangers of this approach.’ This is the same difference that holds between Thornton and so-called fundamentalists. George Westhaver, ‘The Living Body of the Lord: E. B. Pusey’s “Types and Prophecies of the Old Testament” ’ (PhD dissertation, Durham University, 2012). 46  F. W. Dillistone was one of the few admirers of Thornton’s late work. Yet even he grew worried about Thornton’s allegories as the last two volumes of The Form of the Servant trilogy rolled out. Dillistone did not so much object to Thornton’s allegorical method as fail to see the relevance of the multiplication of figures for everyday living. Crisis theologies, he felt, were much more pertinent. Compare his somewhat negative reviews, ‘Christ and the Church, Being the Third Part of a Treatise on The Form of the Servant’, Theology Today 13:3 (1956), pp. 424–26; and ‘The Dominion of Christ, Being the Second Part of a Treatise on The Form of the Servant’, Theology Today 10:2 (1953), pp. 290–91; to his earlier positive reviews, ‘Revelation and the Modern World, Being the First Part of a Treatise on the Form of the Servant’, Theology Today 9:2 (1952), pp. 248–56; and ‘The Common Life in the Body of Christ’, Theology Today 2:1 (1945), pp. 140–42. 47  Lampe, ‘Typological Exegesis,’ p. 207.

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interpretation of the text. In contrast to our ‘analytic’ habit of thought, he claimed, ‘the Hebrew mind did not move primarily along logical lines, at least in the sense in which we understand logic. The pillars upon which the biblical chain of thought rests are not abstract propositions but concrete images, one image suggesting another, sometimes through purely verbal associations.48 One might agree with this on historical grounds and still insist that legitimate correspondence between two biblical ‘images’ can only be shown on the basis of a demonstration of a particular biblical author’s intentions. In practice, Thornton went further than this by giving the ‘concrete images’ independence over against human authors, making them natural rather than conventional symbols.49 The only way this can be justified is metaphysically and Christologically, rather than historically. In the first chapter of Revelation and the Modern World Thornton discussed the relationship of revelation to cultural context, which is really a question about the relationship of creation and redemption. The extremes he sought to avoid were the claims that revealed religion is either reducible to its cultural environment or transcendentally detached from it. The ‘crux’ of Thornton’s answer, indeed the crux of his vast figural cosmos, was ‘the form of the Servant’ as manifest in the Incarnation. In Christ, said Thornton, revelation ‘masters’, has ‘dominion over’, ‘transforms’ and ‘fulfils’ its religious environment. And this is achieved through the ‘agonizing’ conflict in which the Creator wrestled the fallen world in order to redeem it; a conflict like that of Peniel in which the divine wrestler emptied his own strength into the human wrestler, in which, as on Calvary, God suffered defeat in order that Man might be victorious. The Servant-Form characterized not only Jesus himself but the whole environment from which he is inseparable. The stumbling-stone of ‘verbal associations’ clearly follows. ‘God came down to the level of our trivialities in order that those same trivialities might be taken up into a context of surpassing significance. Such is the general character of revelation; and it carries this corollary, that nothing in scripture is too trivial to be relevant.’50 Accustomed as we are to understand claims about the significance of biblical ‘trivialities’ in the foundationalist terms of the inerrantists (all historical and natural details must ostensibly refer to a text-independent reality), the truthfulness of biblical trivialities for Thornton lay in their correspondence to the form of Jesus.51 Thornton was 48  Thornton, Confirmation, pp. 5–6. 49  An analogy here is the difference between the majority opinion of mathematicians that numbers are objective and discoverable rather than purely conventional. 50  Thornton, Revelation and the Modern World, p. 6. 51  Thornton states that fundamentalism not only isolates Scripture from the other two organs of revelation, creation and church, but its conception of biblical unity is not adequately

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undoubtedly a realist, but for him ‘reality’ had degrees of analogous predication depending on whether one refers to Christ, Scripture, or history. The earlier problem of explicating ‘real correspondences’ and sameness-in-difference (or of ‘parts’ to a ‘whole’ or of the ‘one’ to the ‘many’, as Thornton preferred to say) was an issue of analogy. We ought, therefore, to understand Thornton’s doctrine of biblical unity analogically. In fact his favourite analogies for biblical unity were drawn from creation, in which the various parts are related to each other via the whole: bodies, the cosmos, cultural nexuses. And it is in fact the real ontological difference between whole and part that logically justifies Thornton’s synchronic hermeneutic. A closer examination of Thornton’s doctrine of Scripture reveals that for him biblical unity minimally meant a demonstrable ‘cultural unity’ as the objective ground for the faith that seeks an even higher, ultimately Christological, unity.52 To be sure, in contrast to modern secular culture, ancient culture was religious throughout, and common religious (namely, sacrificial) presuppositions held for both Jews and Gentiles.53 It is a contemporary mode of thought to believe that a religious core can be abstracted from such external, ‘primitive’ cultural forms, but for Thornton this was impossible.54 It is rather the pattern of all the creaturely particulars together that defines religion. And if religion is undoubtedly temporal, then ‘the various types of culture through which a religion has passed will be presumed to have entered into the structure of that religion in such a way that they will have contributed to its total pattern.’55 With echoes of Joseph Butler’s doctrine of providential probation, Thornton explained that the Divine Pedagogue is the one who places his creatures in the changing environments to which they must ‘respond’ faithfully.56 Continuity, therefore, comes from the disciplinary design of the whole historical

Christological. For Thornton, ‘Scripture is the Word of God because, and as, it receives its fulfillment in Christ; and he has other organs for his self-manifestation, such as the church, the order of creation and that historical complex which is called Christendom’ (Thornton, Revelation and the Modern World, p. 130). The charge of Christological thinness seems fair given how, say, dispensationalist understandings of prophecy allow for a wide range of predicted details that have no bearing on the revelation of Christ’s person. 52  Thornton, Revelation and the Modern World, pp. 8–9. 53  Thornton, Revelation and the Modern World, p. 10. 54  Thornton, Revelation and the Modern World, p. 12. 55  Thornton, Revelation and the Modern World, p. 14. 56  See especially Book I of The Analogy of Religion. Though not a critical edition, the most up-to-date publication is Joseph Butler, The Works of Bishop Butler, David E. White (ed.) (Rochester, NY: University of Rochester Press, 2006).

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curriculum.57 Also like Butler, he soundly argued that we cannot ‘presume’ in advance the shape of revealed religion, including scriptural revelation.58 ‘For how can we tell what parts of scripture are indispensable vehicles of revelation by contrast with other parts until we have grasped the revelation as a whole?’59 The canon-within-the-canon approach of Lampe simply left ‘unlimited scope for every sort of subjectivity,’ for it typically attempted to neatly identify revelation with God’s activity and religion with man’s response, which ‘lay outside the scope of divine action’.60 What Thornton proposed, however, was that, despite religion’s potential for distorting revelation and separating itself from its source, the two are inseparable. Furthermore, revelation cannot be prevented from ‘creating’ the response of true religion.61 Let us say, then, that God deliberately created ‘the Hebrew psychology’, the people of Israel, and the Scriptures as organs of revelation. ‘The creative grace of revelation’, wrote Thornton, ‘can and does use human life at all levels as the instrument through which it acts.’ Said differently, revelation is not only given to creatures, but in and through them, and this is why Scripture can be characterized as ‘organic’.62 One such ‘medium’ of revelation is Israel’s and the Church’s religion, and another is Scripture.63 The third factor that the two share in common is the ancient religious culture, organically grown until New Testament times, and finally transformed in Christ.64 It was one of Thornton’s most provocative claims in this book that it was the neglect of the doctrine of creation – from cosmology to the theology of culture – that lay behind the inability of Christian theologians to properly understand and relate the doctrines of Church and Scripture. The separation of Scripture, Church, and creation, however, is more than a conceptual failing. It is an objective, ontological schism in the fabric of creation. It is evident in the discontinuity opened up between modern culture and the culture of the early Church. That is to say that culture, a created medium of grace, has been torn. Yet blame for this state of affairs lay squarely at the Church’s feet and was tied to the division of Christendom at the Reformation

57  Thornton, Revelation and the Modern World, pp. 14–15. 58  See especially Book II.I–VI of The Analogy of Religion. 59  Thornton, Revelation and the Modern World, p. 17. 60  Thornton, Revelation and the Modern World, pp. 16, 18–19. 61  Thornton, Revelation and the Modern World, p. 18. 62  Thornton, Revelation and the Modern World, p. 22. 63  Which itself is a fulfilment of natural religion. Thornton, Revelation and the Modern World, p. 19. 64  Thornton, Revelation and the Modern World, pp. 23–24.

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and earlier.65 In Thornton’s understanding, the Object revealed in revelation was always incarnated in a created context that at the highest levels must include the human response of the Church both in its religious culture (i.e. tradition) and in its Scriptures. The problem that division introduced, however, was that the Christian tradition became contested as the Church’s sinful form failed to reflect the content of revelation. The epistemological problem was the result of this ontological fissure in reality. As a result the Liberal solution was to try to unclothe the Object of revelation of its traditional and biblical forms in order to see it without reference to the confusing context of a fallen creation. This strategy was meant to bypass the conflicts of a divided Christendom, but unfortunately it left the Church without revelation at all because the perception of a disembodied revelation is in fact impossible. The Liberal version of Christianity, however, was born into a disrupted Christendom. The revelation which it offered, in separation from any divinely given form, corresponded quite simply to the fact that Christendom in its disintegration had ceased to possess a single integral form. This was what I had in mind in making the suggestion that the course taken by Liberal theology was an inevitable reaction to an existing situation. In this sense the Liberal gospel bore unconscious witness to the fact that Christendom and the Christ are complementary, the one to the other, so that should the former suffer disintegration, the latter can appear, if at all, only in a ghost-like state, in that condition of disembodiment which St Paul compared to nakedness. Such indeed was the Christ who appeared to the Liberal theologians. Quite naturally, and with the best motives, they hastened to dress him up in any clothing that could be found to hand. Bereft of his proper body-garment, the indivisible seamless robe of the great high-priest, the Saviour was hastily arrayed in the mantle of a nineteenth century philosopher. It is not surprising that a garment made for quite another purpose proved to be both ill-fitting and unseemly.66 The irony here is that despite their intention to bridge the gulf between science and religion, the separation of revelation from creation was only widened by Liberal theological solutions. Shorn of their created forms, the fragments of truth uncovered by Liberal hermeneutics paralleled the ‘atomism’ of materialist physics, in that it isolated and attempted to exhaustively understand each 65  See Thornton, Revelation and the Modern World, chapter II. 66  Thornton, Revelation and the Modern World, p. 62.

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bit of text without reference to its proportion within the whole Scripture.67 Given that scientific discovery had disproved the old atomism in favour of a relational view of creation, the older biblical science was somewhat behind the times.68 Thornton argued that time and history really ought to be understood in an organic way that is alien to the Liberal historian. And he drew parallels between Marcionism and the Liberal idealism of his time in that both failed to learn lessons from creation’s organic processes.69 Such Gnosticisms, he asserted, held atomistic philosophies of history. ‘Marcion’s Christ was an isolated manifestation which had no relation to this world-order. The Liberal Jesus, on the other hand, was simply the most remarkable human atom of the series which the world-process has thus far thrown up. Neither the one nor the other could take the process into himself.’70 ‘Atomism travels light’, Thornton concluded; ‘it has no luggage … For here the present does not carry the past along with it.’71 For orthodoxy, though, the ‘inclusion of the Old Testament dispensation within the organism of Christ’s body has the effect of making revelation “progressive” in an organic sense.’72 The Bible describes this in terms of the organic growth of a plant or a body, or in terms of harvesting and sowing, where neither process is more important than the other. To Thornton, atomist supercessionisms were false and to be contrasted with the Pauline-Irenaean concept of recapitulation. Recapitulation, in short, is the doctrine that ‘repetition is the means though which the effects of Adam’s Fall are undone, and thus the order of creation is restored in Christ to its true harmony once more.’73 This entailed a high-priestly ministry in which Adam is understood as the microcosm of creation and the head of humanity in whom all his descendants are included. Christ’s repetition 67  Thornton, Revelation and the Modern World, pp. 66–67. 68  Thornton had interesting things to say about the relationship of science to faith. The former was a sceptical check on a kind of immature faith. Science was part of an apophatic moment in faith’s ascent towards an integrated vision of the whole. See Thornton, Revelation and the Modern World, ch. 3. 69  Both Marcionism and Liberal idealism also posited a dualism between matter and mind, which alienated man from nature. On this view divinity either intervenes ‘occasionally’ and inorganically into the time-series or it must be identified with time and creation itself (Thornton, Revelation and the Modern World, pp. 112–14). One cannot help but think of the ‘neo-orthodox’ event-theologies which Lampe typifies, and which Thornton explicitly guards against when he says, ‘It is not enough to say that the Word of God is contained in Scripture. We must insist once more that Scripture is the Word of God’ (Thornton, Revelation and the Modern World, p. 130). 70  Thornton, Revelation and the Modern World, p. 111. 71  Thornton, Revelation and the Modern World, p. 111. 72  Thornton, Revelation and the Modern World, p. 132. 73  Thornton, Revelation and the Modern World, p. 138.

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of the creation events not only undid the failure of Adam, but his repetition became the final transformation that elevated creation to a new wholeness, fulfilling a process prefigured by God’s shaping of Adam in Genesis 2. Indeed, because Adam includes the whole of humanity, his shaping represents the process of education of Israel and of mankind in general.74 Thus when the Son of God becomes an infant, he shares in the same shaping method that God uses in relation to all mankind except that unlike Adam he is perfectly submitted to the process.75 What Jesus achieves by this is a transfer of Adam and his members to himself; his humble perfection is the ontological difference that subordinates the other parts of humanity to him as their new head. But again, this process has no relation to the Liberal doctrine of progress. ‘The great gulf which Liberalism set between Jesus and his brethren was the nemesis of a progressivist Christology’, Thornton explained. ‘A Christ who climbs up the evolutionary ladder instead of coming down from heaven has not taken “the form of a servant” in lowly self-humiliation. He has not made himself one with sinners and he cannot, therefore, save them.’76 One might wonder how it is that Adam and Christ can include within themselves the whole of humanity. The answer of course is metaphysical, and Thornton was convinced by the work of H. Wheeler Robinson and Aubrey R. Johnson that the Hebrews had a unique understanding of the relationship of the one to the many, in which it is understood that the human person is his body and that his personality can be extended through instruments and other people.77 For the one to be universal, it does not need to be a generalized form in Plato’s heaven. It can in fact be a concrete particular within the larger pattern, which characterizes the pattern as a whole.78 This conception of unity holds for both the relationship of Christ to his Body, the Church, and for the relationship of Scripture as a whole to its parts. Or, as Robinson says, ‘A Hebrew sentence is like the Hebrew idea of personality; its parts are vividly and picturesquely set before us, but they are co-ordinated, rather than subordinated to one central idea, and the nature of the co-ordination is often implicit rather than explicit.’79

74  Thornton, Revelation and the Modern World, p. 143. 75  Thornton, Revelation and the Modern World, p. 147. 76  Thornton, Revelation and the Modern World, p. 112. 77  This is a more Stoic anthropology, but then Thornton thinks that the Stoics were influenced by the Semitic way of thinking (Revelation and the Modern World, p. 113, n.1). 78  On this see David S. Yeago, ‘Jesus of Nazareth and Cosmic Redemption: The Relevance of St. Maximus the Confessor’, Modern Theology 12.2 (1996), p. 180. 79  Thornton, Revelation and the Modern World, p. 153.

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Although Thornton escaped the spiritualizing tendency of the ‘quasiPlatonism’ to which Lampe objected, the Hebrew view of time is still solidly Platonic. The logical point that Thornton made is sound. If each moment in the time-series is immediately related to the whole, then history must be reconceptualised in a predominantly synchronic way. The ‘many’ who are ‘included in the whole’, he wrote, ‘are spread out through time; but the Hebrew mind does not envisage the time-process as a causal sequence, since it does not think, as we do, in terms of logical chains of causation. On the contrary, all the details are related to one another by their dependence upon the whole to which they belong.’80 The hermeneutical consequence is that each part signifies the whole. And the whole, to be sure, is Christ. Catholics are accustomed to talk about the extension of the Incarnation in the Church, which is the direction in which Thornton took this biblical metaphysic: the extension of the Christ will be thought of in terms of context rather than of causal succession. Christ is then seen to be that Whole which includes all the people of God in its context. As (in Wheeler Robinson’s analogy) the sentence is implicit in its parts, so Christ is implicitly present in the unfolding story of his people, as that Word in which all their several contributions find significance; with which, therefore, in a sense they are identified, whatever their temporal relation to his earthly life may be. When once the idea of causal succession has retreated into the background, making room for Hebrew presuppositions, then the Whole is no longer thought of primarily in terms of temporal order. Thus the redeemer, by penetrating into the orbit of the Adamic social group, has made his own human range co-terminous with that orbit. Conversely, by the same fact he has also gathered up the vast multitudes of humanity into the brief compendium of our salvation which he enacted in his earthly life.81 What does this say ontologically about the Bible? As that created context into which the Lord is Incarnate, biblical images have an independence vis-à-vis 80  Thornton, Revelation and the Modern World, pp. 152–3. Put differently, God does not create under compulsion. Thus there is no logical necessity between God and world that could possibly be expressed in causal relationships. A logically consistent theist must, therefore, reject the diachronic view of time as normative. This is a simple point, but one lost on most modern theologians. Leibniz, however, is someone with a more ‘Hebrew’ conception of time that Thornton discusses in Chapter 10.ii. 81  Thornton, Revelation and the Modern World, pp. 154–5.

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Scripture’s authors. That is to say that the elements of Scripture are logically prior to, and ontologically pre-exist, the biblical writers by virtue of their transfiguration in Christ. Thornton was quite willing to accept the equivalent Jewish conclusion from Proverbs 8 that God created the world through torah.82 This is a complementary interpretation to Wisdom as Christ himself. Nevertheless, this does not denigrate the role of the Prophets and Apostles in transmission, for, the concept of torah as instruction encompasses both the written content of revelation (Scripture) and also the oral form in which it is passed on in history (tradition). One of the most common uses of torah in the Old Testament has to do with parents passing on instruction to their children. Thus the creaturely organ which revelation creates in order to extend itself in time is, in addition to Scripture, the ‘genealogical continuity’ of authorised teachers in the Church.83 Through such elders, wisdom is recapitulated in time. Before we examine Thornton’s doctrine of the apostolic ministry and its connection to Confirmation more closely, we should note where the argument has taken us so far. While sharing a desire to recommend the practice of typology like Thornton, Lampe’s writings on the topic were thinner. He seemed to fall into the trap of separating revelation’s content (the divine acts) from its form (the words of the human authors). He objected to quasi-Platonist allegories, but had no theory of analogy with which to justify the argument in favour of the correspondences he thought were in history. Thornton, on the other hand, and in an un-Platonic way, argued for the inseparability of revelation’s form and content, which meant that creation’s forms were integral to revelation from the lowest level of physics to the highest level of human culture. The schism in creation’s fabric due to the fall and, more proximately, due to the fact of Christian division, constantly tempts the theologian to pull the organs of revelation apart and to adopt a non-analogical hermeneutic. That is to say, that the atomistic exegete isolates creation’s forms from their integral context in the whole of creation recapitulated in Christ. A proper method of interpretation, though, follows the Hebrew way of thinking. Based upon a real ontological distinction between the whole and its parts, between Adam and his offspring, between torah and time, one is positively encouraged to find verbal correspondences in Scripture of the sort at which Lampe balked. Because of this metaphysic, such correspondences gain independence vis-àvis the human authors of Scripture who do not conventionally assign meaning to these symbols. Rather, correspondences in Scripture are natural symbols created by God and discoverable by the exegete. 82  Thornton, Revelation and the Modern World, p. 205. 83  Thornton, Revelation and the Modern World, p. 207.

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Confirmation and Conflict

The question we will now briefly pursue is whether one has to reject Thornton’s hermeneutics if one rejects his conclusions about Confirmation. Was Lampe in fact correct in seeing his hermeneutics as the cause of his unconvincing conclusions? The argument began with Thornton’s uncle, F. W. Puller, who in 1880 published What is the Distinctive Grace of Confirmation? and was followed by A. J. Mason’s The Relation of Confirmation to Baptism in 1891. Mason argued that without Confirmation baptism was only an ‘unfinished fragment.’84 A largely intra-Anglo-Catholic argument, it yielded no consensus view and was revived only in 1946 when Gregory Dix gave a lecture subsequently entitled The Theology of Confirmation in Relation to Baptism in which he expressed his agreement with Puller and Mason.85 Dix had previously published thoughts on Confirmation, but used this lecture to comment on an interim report (Confirmation Today), put out by the Joint Committees of the Convocations of Canterbury and York in 1944.86 Two years later Thornton entered the fray with his identically entitled Confirmation Today.87 The following year, Thornton delivered a paper to a group of clergy entitled The Unity of Baptism and Confirmation in Scripture and in 1948 he wrote a lengthy article ‘The Holy Spirit in Christian Initiation’ for the Eastern Churches Quarterly.88 Both Dix and Thornton were in turn challenged in 1951 by Geoffrey Lampe’s The Seal of the Spirit.89 As a moderate evangelical, Lampe argued that Confirmation, though helpful as a supplement to infant baptism, was not essential to initiation, since the Holy Spirit was given fully at baptism.90 Meanwhile, Dix had joined a Theological Advisory Commission which published a report for the Lambeth Conference of 1948 entitled The Theology of 84  For more details on what follows see Steinberg, ‘The Relation Of Confirmation To Baptism’. 85   The Theology of Confirmation in Relation to Baptism, p. 3. 86   Confirmation To-day. Being the Schedule Attached to the Interim Report of the Joint Committees on Confirmation of the Convocations of Canterbury and York (London: Press and Publications Board of the Church Assembly, 1944). See Steinberg, ‘The Relation of Confirmation to Baptism,’ p. 4. 87  Thornton, Confirmation Today. 88  Thornton, The Unity of Baptism and Confirmation (London: Privately Printed, 1947); Thornton, ‘The Holy Spirit in Christian Initiation’, Eastern Churches Quarterly, Supplement 7:2 (1948), pp. 53–69. 89  A second edition followed in 1967 with a new introduction: G. W. H. Lampe, The Seal Of The Spirit: A Study In The Doctrine Of Baptism And Confirmation In The New Testament And The Fathers (London: S.P.C.K., 1967). 90  Steinberg, ‘The Relation of Confirmation to Baptism,’ p. 4.

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Christian Initiation. In 1954 Thornton published Confirmation: Its Place in the Baptismal Mystery, which followed a particularly heated and personal response to Lampe called ‘Baptism and Confirmation in Current Controversy’, in which Thornton held to the Dix-Mason line, but now utilized typological arguments.91 Thornton’s book, however, did not receive the desired response. Indeed, the theological consensus seemed to be that he had become hopelessly eccentric with his detailed allegories in support of a two-stage doctrine of initiation. Only two more sets of unpublished notes exist from 1954 until his death in 1960, namely, ‘Confirmation in Scripture’ and some comments on The Church of England Liturgical Commission’s 1959 publication, Baptism and Confirmation To-day.92 Lampe’s position largely won the day and the debate can be said to have been concluded by a report to the General Synod in 1970, to which Lampe contributed. What was interesting about Lampe’s position was that he sided with Roman Catholic tradition against the Anglo-Catholic party in understanding Confirmation as a ‘strengthening’ rather than a ‘completing’. Thornton thought that a rite of episcopal Confirmation could be found in Scripture and that it happened, as in the Eastern Church, immediately after baptism by either chrismation or the laying on of hands. In the Western middle ages, however, the practice of personal episcopal Confirmation became separated in time due to the practical problem of travel.93 The medieval doctrine of ‘strengthening’ followed: When once the process of separation had got under way in the administering of the two sacraments, it was doubtless inevitable that baptism with water should tend to be regarded as complete in itself. It would then seem to follow that there was nothing new to be added; and the more ancient conception of Confirmation as the ‘completion’ of baptism would become less intelligible.94 91  Thornton, ‘Baptism and Confirmation in Current Controversy’, CR: Quarterly Review of the Community of the Resurrection 198 (1952), pp. 1–7. Says Steinberg: ‘The tone of the final two paragraphs of the article is so unlike Thornton’s impersonal published writings, that one must assume that he felt confident that only the converted would read his article.’ We know, however, that Lampe did (Steinberg, ‘The Relation of Confirmation to Baptism,’ p. 198). 92  L. S. Thornton, ‘Confirmation in Scripture’. Manuscript with Footnotes. 8 pp. Mirfield Deposit 2.2/2. n.d.; L. S. Thornton, ‘Baptism and Confirmation To-day’, MS 3 pp., n.d. MD2.15.; Steinberg, ‘The Relation of Confirmation to Baptism’, pp. 180–3. 93  Thornton, Confirmation, p. 152. 94  Thornton, Confirmation, p. 154.

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Lampe, on the other hand, by no means denied that there is a further act of the Spirit’s grace in the second part of the initiation rite, and in this regard he apparently drew closer to Thornton.95 Still, he would not allow that Confirmation was a completion. He admitted in the ‘Introduction to the Second Edition’ of The Seal of the Spirit that for all intents and purposes Thornton had softened the extreme statement quoted at the beginning of this paper, namely, that unconfirmed Christians have not yet entered the Covenant. He offered a succinct summary of Thornton’s position: In Confirmation: Its place in the Baptismal Mystery this extreme position is modified: ‘the Holy Spirit’, he says, ‘is the creative agent of all that is effected in baptism’. Yet ‘the specific endowment of the neophyte with the gift of the Holy Spirit belongs to a second stage in initiation’, ‘the second part of the baptismal whole’. This duality in initiation corresponds to two distinct operations of the Spirit which in turn correspond to Christ’s incarnation and anointing and to Easter and Pentecost; the one relates to being, the other to mission. Thus Baptism ‘is for the neophyte his entry into the new birth of the world through death and resurrection, whereas Confirmation constitutes his participation in the Pentecostal gift of the Spirit’. Thus in his later work Dr. Thornton in effect revived the distinction … between an ‘external’ and an ‘internal’ operation of the Spirit in Baptism and Confirmation.96 While Thornton had become more nuanced in his understanding of the Holy Spirit’s role in baptism, when one understands the place of the episcopate in his scheme his book did not really abandon his earlier anti-evangelical stance. His preferred description of the peculiar grace of Confirmation was a ‘completion’, and this depended on its episcopal link. For, without the visible connection to the whole Church, the confirmand does not yet have a unique vocation. Thornton’s overriding motivation for articulating his doctrine of 95  Steinberg writes, ‘His most fundamental difference from Dix and Thornton is belief in Confirmation as a sacrament of growth. This was rejected by Mason for whom there was no place for a sacrament of nourishment besides the eucharist, and by Ramsey who rejected the Roman Catholic view. Strangely Lampe here sides with that Church against the Anglo-Catholic party in his own.… And although he is satisfied with the evidence that to him shows that the Spirit is given in baptism, he nevertheless posits, in the manner of an apologetic, that in baptism the Spirit is given “proleptically” and in Confirmation there is a “further act of the Spirit’s grace”.’ (Steinberg, ‘The Relation of Confirmation to Baptism,’ pp. 167–9). 96  Lampe, The Seal of the Spirit, 1967, p. xxi.

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Confirmation was that he believed that non-conformist evangelicals separated the ‘interior illumination’ of the Holy Spirit from ‘the authority of church tradition’ mediated by the apostolic ministry.97 This concern was in accordance with his previously stated argument for the unity of form and content in revelation. Given, however, that these schisms were not the sole responsibility of the Free Churches, it must be asked whether an emphasis on validity really addresses the heart of the issue: ecclesial sin. Is reunion simply a matter of sorting out issues of ministerial validity and our relation to those valid ministers through the sacraments (baptism now included)?98 Surely the Anglo-Catholic attempt to offer the episcopate as the solution for the disintegrating effects of Christian original sin has over time shown itself to be misguided, given that an enduring ecumenical problem is the phenomenon of ‘bad bishops’?99 Nonetheless, Thornton’s later figural reading of the apostolic ministry does offer hope for an ecumenical future even though it is inconsistent with his (un)ecumenical reservations.100 A discussion of Lampe’s non-allegorical exegesis is beyond the scope of this chapter, which seeks to test whether Thornton’s hermeneutic is discredited by his conclusions about Confirmation. An examination of several key texts in his argument will serve to show how typology functions. Some of his interpretations are not typological, while some that are typological are not so much methodologically wrong in the use of verbal correspondences, but illegitimately used to draw conclusions about historical facts. Ultimately, even if one does accept Thornton’s conclusions, the exegetical process by which he reaches them is at odds with his own method articulated in Revelation and the Modern World. First, Thornton literally interpreted key texts in a way that supports his twostage doctrine of initiation. Galatians 4:6 allegedly distinguished between baptism (‘Because ye are sons …’) and Confirmation (‘God sent for the Spirit of his Son into your hearts, crying, Abba, Father’). In the same way 1 Corinthians 12:13 allegedly refers to baptism (‘For by one Spirit were we all baptized into one body’) and to Confirmation (‘And were all imbued with one Spirit’). These are not typological readings and cannot discredit Thornton’s figural method. Other literal readings include Thornton’s claim that the laying on of hands in 97  Thornton, Confirmation, p. 25. 98  Something that has been abstracted from a theology of holiness since the sixteenth century divisions, as Ephraim Radner has shown in chapter 3 of The End of the Church: A Pneumatology of Christian Division in the West (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1998). 99  Ephraim Radner, Hope among the Fragments: The Broken Church and Its Engagement of Scripture (Grand Rapids, MI: Brazos Press, 2004), chapter 10. 100  Thornton, ‘The Body of Christ in the New Testament’.

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Acts 8 and 19, and Hebrews 6:2 refer to Confirmation.101 Although Lampe disagreed with Thornton’s conclusions, these were not typological.102 A slightly more difficult issue is whether Paul literally used the figure of Abraham to distinguish between baptism and Confirmation in Galatians 3–4 and Romans 4 as Thornton believed.103 In his review of Confirmation To-day Michael Ramsey objected that ‘it may be true that in Romans iv, 1–15 the justification of Abraham by faith and his subsequent circumcision as a seal of righteousness are intended to prefigure the baptism of converts and their subsequent sealing in Confirmation. But it is far from self-evident that Romans iv was written to set forth a pattern of Christian initiation.’104 For Thornton had stated that in these and other passages referring to the seal (Eph. 1:13, 14; 2 Cor. 1:20–22), ‘[i]t is natural to suppose that he [Paul] is thinking of the “circumcision of the heart” which is promised in Deuteronomy (3:6) and of the new covenant of the “law written in the heart” of which Jeremiah writes (31:31– 34). But the fullest statements are in Ezekiel.’105 Here Thornton admits that he is doing literal exegesis. It may be true that Paul’s Hebrew way of thinking would lead him to these Old Testament passages, but Thornton had to establish this on the literal ground he set for himself, on the ground of what Paul had ‘in mind’. This is not equivalent to admitting that Paul’s types and allegories are merely conventional symbols – Paul may have had in mind objective divinely given symbolism that he had found in the figure of Abraham.106 Ramsey was right, however, that Thornton did not successfully establish this in the case of Confirmation. That being said, this was again an issue of a contestable literal interpretation, not a figural one. Thornton makes a similar leap in his interpretation of what Justin Martyr must have had in mind in his oblique references to initiation.107 Whatever the fact of the matter, however, Thornton’s readers were not convinced that the connections he discovered were intended by Justin. Let us admit on the 101  Thornton, Confirmation, chapter 3.ii and 6.iv. 102  Lampe, The Seal of the Spirit (1967), pp. xix–xxi. 103  Thornton, Confirmation, p. 31. 104  A. M. Ramsey, ‘Book Review: Confirmation Today,’ Theology 49 (1946), pp. 248–9. Michael Ramsey was an appreciative critic of Thornton, and this review offers a fair criticism. For Ramsey’s own contribution to the Confirmation debate see A. M. Ramsey, ‘The Doctrine of Confirmation,’ Theology 48, no. 303 (September 1, 1945), pp. 194–201. 105  Thornton, Confirmation Today, p. 8. 106  This goes to the point made above that biblical figures are ontological independent of the biblical writers, who do not in any case assign figural meanings conventionally as a novelist might. Rather, they discover divinely intended meanings. In fact, insofar as the writers are characters within Scripture, they are themselves but figures. 107  Thornton, Confirmation, ch. 2.

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basis of Thornton’s biblical metaphysic that such links do exist and that he has discovered them. Let us also admit that by inhabiting this Hebrew mindset we can even make educated guesses about what an Apostle or Father had in mind. However, unless it can be shown with certainty that such links were definitely understood by the author, they cannot function as proof of a historical practice. Therefore, if one accepts, as I think one should, the logic of biblical figuration, Thornton’s argument is still vulnerable to attack in his historical argument from Justin as it is from Paul. This does not mean that Thornton’s figural links are illegitimate. Once again, if one believes Thornton’s conclusions to be wrong, one must nevertheless conclude that his figural hermeneutic is not responsible. His historical case for what Justin ‘must have’ thought is the problem. And without his having established this, it cannot be used as proof for the ritual order of initiation. A concession must be made to Thornton’s critics in a way. It is indeed the case that the figural mindset will discover links between various texts that in principle can be found by other interpreters. If it is a historical fact that biblical writers shared this mindset, then it does actually become natural to make educated guesses about whether a particular writer has made the same link as another interpreter at another time. This move is most legitimate in those texts where authorial intent is far from obvious – for example 1 Cor. 11:2–16 regarding head coverings. This text and its relatives (1 Cor. 14:34; 1 Tim. 2:11–15) are notoriously slippery as proof-texts for establishing practices: women’s head coverings, women’s silence in church, a male-only priesthood. A much higher degree of apostolic intentionality needs to be established with much less obvious independent symbolic connotations. Therefore, Lampe is half right to complain that Thornton uses typology to establish doctrines without reference to the literal, historical context.108 This is right insofar as Thornton uses typology, but wrong in that his judgement about figural links influences his judgement about what the writers literally intended. Second, Thornton used figural readings of Joshua 5:2–12 and Ezekiel 9:4–6 to try to establish the ritual order of initiation, but his arguments are strained. In the Ezekiel story the sprinkling with water comes before the giving of the heart of flesh, while in Joshua the people first cross the Jordan and then are circumcised. Thornton draws some very rich figural connections between sealing, circumcision, and anointing in both Testaments, but he has to work hard to ensure that these types will only be applied to Confirmation and not baptism (thus the ‘circumcision’ of Col. 2:8–15 is Confirmation). When he is confronted with those Fathers who apply these types to baptism, he has to argue 108  Lampe, ‘The Reasonableness of Typology’, pp. 20–21.

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that their characteristically figural way of thinking allowed them to refer to one part of initiation under the name of the other – a sort of communication of idiom on analogy to the ‘interchange’ between the divine and human in Christ, analogous to the relation between the Old and New Testaments, and between nature and grace.109 No doubt these last three relations are analogous, yet it is hard to understand how baptism and Confirmation constitute one more analogous pair. We will develop this point below, but we must be clear about what is wrong with Thornton’s argument here. On the sophisticated terms of his figural hermeneutic, it is perfectly legitimate to make verbal and symbolic links between biblical books. Further, given the New Testament precedents, it is legitimate to find types for the sacraments in the Old Testament. Despite his claim that Confirmation is in the Old Testament, Thornton had to concede that, having connected all of the types, they do in some sense apply to baptism and not just Confirmation. The communication of idiom move he made was too convenient. He simply had not proven that the Early Church practised initiation in this order. Third, Thornton drew a legitimate analogy between Christ’s and our initiation, but he went down an idiosyncratic route. Rather than seeing Jesus’ baptism as recapitulating ours, Thornton reserved the nativity as the image of our baptism and assigned Jesus’ baptism as an image of our Confirmation. This is because our baptism is a rebirth after which we grow into our vocation given in Confirmation just as Jesus grew into his vocation given at his baptism. While the original rite never had a temporal break between baptism and Confirmation, as a paradigm for the extended period of time between infant baptism and the more mature faith of the confirmed this may be helpful. Jesus’ baptism would stand as a commissioning that leads toward Calvary in a way that symbolises the self-conscious cross-carrying of the newly confirmed, whose process of catechesis led them to this decision.110 It makes less sense of the original rite of Confirmation-chrismation that left no temporal gap for the child to grow up into a new anointing. This argument becomes even more complicated as Thornton had to explain how our baptism represents Christ’s death and resurrection. For, by the ‘interchange of properties’, Christ’s baptism both images his original descent into human nature, and his upcoming descent into hell, while his ascent from the water foreshadows his Resurrection and Ascension. This means that our baptism is parallel to Jesus’ after all.111 Thus Thornton adds a third moment 109  Thornton, Confirmation, pp. 67, 71. 110  Steinberg, ‘The Relation of Confirmation to Baptism’, p. 214. 111  Thornton, Confirmation, p. 122.

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in the account: the descent of the dove. Here the single mystery becomes ‘a manifold in three stages’, descent-ascent-descent, as the descent of the Spirit on Jesus prefigures the descent of the Spirit on the Church at Pentecost and on all Christians at their Confirmation.112 It is hard to say what has become of the two-stage theory, and the difficulty of his style only adds to the confusion. As an attempt to find an analogue in initiation to the ‘unity in plurality’ of Christ’s two natures, of the two Testaments, and of nature and grace, it must be judged a failure. The real problem is that the duality in initiation is not between two parts of a single rite, but between the form and content of initiation. Thornton admits that this distinction is real when he criticises evangelicals for their separation of inner illumination by the Spirit from outward ritual form. When Lampe identifies the anointing of the Spirit in faith with the inner aspect of the outer form of baptism, however, Thornton inconsistently rejects the distinction. The ‘seal of the Spirit’ must be another outward form. I believe the confusion in Thornton’s interpretation here comes from trying to find interpenetrating dualities – a perfectly legitimate analogical move – in the wrong place. Furthermore, this would not have happened if Thornton had used his figural method more consistently. Thornton has already articulated the metaphysical distinction between whole and parts in a way that explains how all of the parts of Christ’s life can singly signify the whole. Nativity, Baptism, Transfiguration, Cross and Resurrection, Ascension and Pentecost all repeat the same pattern. unified by Christ himself. These ‘body-parts’ of Christ’s life are obviously more numerous than just two stages. Had Thornton simply referred this to the phenomenon of recapitulation, he could have explained the ‘interchange of properties’ between the various moments of Christ’s life. That is because there are two kinds of interchange, as he was well aware. The first is between two different ontological levels: divinity-humanity, content-form, New Testament-Old Testament, person-body, grace-nature. This is an analogical relationship. The second is better described as synecdochical relations between several parts on the same ontological level: the texts of Scripture (one of the consequences of which are ‘verbal associations’, but more broadly the recapitulated figures of Scripture), the members of the Church, the parts of an ecosystem. The second kind of interchange logically depends upon the first. To be fair, what seems to be the real issue for Thornton is the relationship of the beginning of the New Creation in Baptism to its eschatological fulfilment. Separated from the rites of initiation, the issue for Thornton is this: Genesis 2 has a two stage ‘moulding’ and ‘breathing into’ Adam, which for Thornton 112  Thornton, Confirmation, pp. 122–6, here p. 126.

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signifies the beginning and end of the Christian life. Thornton’s question is whether ‘beginning-end’ is a relation analogous to the two natures of Christ, nature-grace, and so on. I think not. The first ex nihilo creation must of course be the dust out of which Adam is made. I propose that the further distinction between redemption and deification can account for both the re-creative moulding action of God and the spiritual inbreathing. On the one hand, redemption means the forgiveness of sins that takes Adam from hell back to earth. On the other hand, deification takes Adam beyond the realm of organized matter into the heavenly realm of the supernatural. Thornton’s problem is that he still wants to map redemption and deification onto a timeline and assign rites to both. The confusion is that whereas Creation and New Creation are two divine acts, the New Creation is one act that simultaneously achieves redemption and deification. As mentioned above, if deification were not the ultimate goal of the Incarnation, the dramatic action of life would be wholly shaped around humanity’s battle with sin and not with their adventure into the supernatural; the spiritual life would be shaped around a ‘no’ to sin rather than a ‘yes’ to the divine pedagogue.113 In conclusion, I suggest that Lampe failed adequately to address or critique the logical basis for Thornton’s practice of finding synchronic ‘verbal associations’ in Scripture. As the ‘many’ that are unified in the ‘whole’ of Scripture taken up in Christ, they analogically reflect each other – they have a real rather than epiphenomenal sameness-in-difference by virtue of the figure of Christ. As against Lampe, this biblical metaphysic and hermeneutic are not implicated in the weaknesses in Thornton’s arguments in favour of a two-stage doctrine of initiation. These weaknesses include a contestable literal interpretation of certain New Testament passages and the assignation of certain intentions to St Paul and Justin Martyr. The break in this argument is not the result of his figural reading of Joshua and Ezekiel, but because Thornton thought he had established that Paul and Justin had discovered the same figural links as he had himself. Lampe did not think Thornton established this with a high enough degree of certainty. Without this certainty, the alleged typological distinction between baptism and Confirmation can provide no more basis for Christian practice than does the ‘head coverings’ passage. Finally, the ‘interchange of properties’ that Thornton finds between baptism and Confirmation explains 113  I should add that Thornton’s desire to postulate a rite behind biblical symbols is also an undefended assumption probably drawn from the Myth and Ritual school that influenced him through the work of S. H. Hooke and Aubrey Johnson. But if one does not accept the assumption that every myth presupposes a ritual, then Thornton’s arguments for Confirmation again fail. See Robert A. Segal, Myth: A Very Short Introduction, 2nd edition (New York: Oxford University Press, 2015).

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away too conveniently the biblical texts that identify the seal with baptism itself. In the same way the interchange that he finds between Christ’s Nativity and Baptism is wrongly seen as analogous to other theological dualities. Had he utilized his typological method more consistently, he would have interpreted this interchange as an instance of the ‘many’ signifying the ‘one’. There are other contestable readings in Thornton’s book, but they are not problematic in ways different from the interpretations we have examined. Are these interpretations examples of ‘eisegesis’? If so, it is not due to Thornton’s hermeneutics, but to his underlying conviction that the episcopate is the locus within which all the outer forms of the Church’s rites are held together, and through which all of the Church’s members are held together in unity. This is what motivates the highly contestable conclusions found in Confirmation, though it contains some highly inspired figural readings of enduring worth. 3

Episcopal Epilogue

The year before Thornton entered the Confirmation debate he wrote a tract strongly condemning the South India Scheme for its failure to provide a biblical justification for apostolic succession, which it treated as a mere pragmatic arrangement. Here Thornton clearly stated the standard catholic view that there is no sacrificial Eucharist without a valid ministry.114 Christ’s connection with the Church was at stake. There does not appear to have been any criticism of Thornton’s figural exegesis in this tract despite the fact that it and not ‘The Body of Christ in the New Testament’ contains a figural defence of the particular catholic understanding of validity. And yet, in addition to Lampe, both Neill and Moule criticised his exegesis in ‘The Body’, even though Hickinbotham in the same volume thought that Thornton had mellowed.115 Hickinbotham relates that Thornton was a member of a committee appointed by the Archbishop to look at the South India Scheme. This committee in fact welcomed its positive view of the episcopate. Thornton, he believes, was at odds with the editor and the contributors of The Apostolic Ministry, at least insofar as that volume was targeted against the South India Scheme.116 In 114  Thornton, The Judgement of Scripture: A Biblical Torch Turned on the South India Scheme (Westminster: Pax House, 1945), p. 18. 115  Neill, ‘A General Survey,’ p. 9; C. F. D. Moule, ‘The Apostolic Commission in the New Testament’, in The Ministry Of The Church: A Review (London: Canterbury Press, 1947), p. 51. 116  Kenneth E. Kirk (ed.), The Apostolic Ministry: Essays On The History And The Doctrine Of Episcopacy (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1946). See J. P. Hickinbotham, ‘The Doctrine of the Ministry,’ in The Ministry Of The Church: A Review, p. 33.

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fact, Bengt Sundkler recorded a less sanguine outcome to the committee’s deliberations. Chaired by A. E. J. Rawlinson, Bishop of Derby, the so-called Derby Report was produced by a committee stacked with critics of the South India Scheme, Thornton being one who thought the latest edition was unacceptable. To be sure, Sundkler relates that the majority thought the Scheme should go forward. But they wanted major amendments to the Constitution on these points: (1) The statement of the Faith of the Church should be so re-drafted as to place the adherence of the Church of South India to the historic Faith of the Church Catholic beyond question. (2) The statement on the Sacraments in the Church (Constitution II, 6) should be freed from misleading ambiguities. (3) The use of the rite of Confirmation should, as soon as may be practicable, be made the general rule of the Church.117 (4) There should be a modification of the rules for synodical procedure, clarifying and properly safeguarding the position of the bishops. (5) There should be a reconsideration of the ultimate relation of the Church of South India to other churches not episcopally ordered. (6) There should be a satisfactory clarification of the circumstances, if any, in which non-episcopally ordained ministers may continue to exercise ministry in the Church of South India at the conclusion of the interim period.118 In 1947 Thornton put out another tract that maintained his opposition towards the Scheme, and a later article showed that he held the same opinion about reunion at home.119 The issue raging in England just prior to the reunion of 1947 was whether the episcopally and non-episcopally ordained ministers of the united church would be regarded as equals in the interim period leading up to a completely episcopally-ordained priesthood, or whether the two groups could be characterized as regular and irregular as the Lambeth Conference 1930 and Archbishop William Temple had implied. The Free Church ministers of course did not want to be characterized as irregular. In order for reunion to work, however, the Church of South India’s Basis of Union remained uncommitted to any particular interpretation of episcopacy.120 In his article, Thornton 117  Anglo-Catholic theologian A. E. Morris had objected earlier to the South India Scheme in two articles: ‘Confirmation and South India – I’, Theology 20 (1930), pp. 28–40; and ‘Confirmation and South India – II’, Theology 20 (1930), pp. 71–6. 118  Bengt Sundkler, Church of South India: The Movement Towards Union, 1900–1947 (London: Lutterworth Press, 1954), pp. 335–6. 119  Thornton, ‘The Essentials of Revelation in Relation to the Problem of Reunion’, CR: Quarterly Review of the Community of the Resurrection 179 (1947), pp. 5–11. 120  See Sundkler, Church of South India, chapter 13.

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argues that the 1930 Lambeth Conference similarly refused to accept a particular theory of the origin and character of episcopacy. Yet its articulation was more substantive and less minimalistic. For the Lambeth Report did not say whether the Lord, his Apostles, or both, had in mind the historic episcopate. It did say, however, that the episcopate went ‘behind the perversions of history to the original conception of the Apostolic Ministry’, regardless of whose conception it was.121 In effect the Anglican Communion was only saying that the doctrine of the episcopate, while essential, was not dogmatically defined like the doctrine of Atonement or the Inspiration of Scripture.122 Nonetheless, Thornton’s work in ‘The Body’ provided a figural solution to the ecumenical problem. For, although the evangelicals did not notice this, ‘The Body’ actually provided a way to understand the phenomena of ‘bad bishops’, which was precisely the ecumenical issue for the Free Churches. Thornton may not have been aware of his own insight in this paper either, for it was on a completely different tack from his work of a year earlier.123 In The Judgment of Scripture Thornton made some connections with the Old Testament of real historical interest, but of ambiguous theological value for an understanding of bad bishops. The tract is occupied with showing how the Gospels and Epistles in their discussion of ministry had real echoes of the visible theocratic ordinations by Moses of both the heads of the twelve tribes 121  Thornton, ‘The Essentials,’ p. 5. 122  Ibid., p. 6. 123  See Thornton, ‘Church Relations in England’, Faith and Unity 4 (1954), pp. 3–9. One Roman Catholic observer mentioned that Confirmation still played a role in Anglo-Catholic opposition to reunion schemes at home. Interestingly, he sided with Thornton’s interpretation over Lampe’s, despite the latter’s general proximity to the medieval Catholic position. See J. Crehan, ‘The Sealing at Confirmation’, Theological Studies 14 (1953), pp. 273–9. On the issue of episcopacy, however, Louis Bouyer sided with evangelical ecumenists such as Lesslie Newbigin. In his characteristically condescending way, Bouyer praises the CSI in order to take jabs at Anglo-Catholics. He claimed that the CSI, although vague about episcopacy in the beginning, actually was closer to Catholic truth than the Anglicans, for it emphasized the spatial and not just the temporal aspects of apostolic succession. Its eucharistic liturgy was also better than the BCP and would actually result in valid sacraments if their ministers were validly ordained, which in any case they were not. He could not fault the evangelicals (and here he singled out Newbigin as remarkable) in the way you can fault the Reformers themselves for not having inherited the true Church. Yet Bouyer does fault them for remaining sympathetic to their history and for believing that the Church as a whole can sin. Its members can and do, but the Church as a whole is sinless. That means the Roman Church is the one true church, and all others partake of saving grace spiritually, despite the lack of objective grace in their sacraments. They should not, however, be satisfied with this, but should continue the journey to unity by becoming Catholics. Louis Bouyer, ‘A Roman Catholic View of the Church of South India’, Theology 59 (1956), pp. 3–11.

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and of Joshua (though he does not tell how these two kinds of ordinations relate on the historical level). There are also allusions to David’s reestablishment of the theocracy and of the temple worship (again, Thornton does not synthesize these two kinds of ordination). His point about the existence of an Old Testament teaching succession as the basis of rabbinical succession points to an important parallel, but insofar as Christ merely replaced the old succession with a new one, the new can only reflect the old as something superseded on the diachronic plane of history.124 If Thornton believed that the new succession could not be broken by sin like that of the Jews, he failed to explain why. Having read Revelation, one might ask what the doctrine of succession would look like on Thornton’s later non-linear view of time. Thankfully, ‘The Body’ provides a theological – indeed theodical – solution to how a broken succession can be taken up into Christ, that is, how such a situation can be synchronically recapitulated and transformed. The redemption of broken succession is explained with reference to Judas. As with Thornton’s discussion of revelation and initiation, he was concerned to show the unity of form and content in the ministry. Revelation creates its own organs of reception and succession, one of which is the apostolic ministry. If the content of the eyewitness deposit handed over by the Apostles is the sacrificial Form of the Servant, then the apostolic succession must conform to that same pattern. When it does not, as with the tradition of the Jewish elders and with Judas, a break occurs between ecclesial form and content. Thornton elaborated upon this when, beginning with Mark 7:3, he noted the irony of Jesus’ condemnation of the Pharisees’ tradition of the elders despite having established his own tradition through the Apostles. Traditions, he said, ‘are matters delivered or committed into one’s keeping’.125 The New Testament word is paradosis, and it ‘always means the content of what is so delivered’. He further observed that there are two different senses of that word that are side by side 124  For a comparison of the concept of succession (semikhah) in Judaism and Christianity see Daniel Boyarin, Border Lines: The Partition of Judaeo-Christianity (Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2006), chapter 3. For the typological use of Aaronic types to justify a succession through Ali’s, sons Hasan and Husain, by Shiite Muslims see: Steven M. Wasserstrom, Between Muslim and Jew: The Problem of Symbiosis Under Early Islam (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1995). The primary extension of the fundamental ‘Muhammed = Moses/Ali = Aaron’ equation was the legend that the angel Gabriel named ‘Ali’s two sons Hasan and Husain, after Aaron’s two sons, Shabbar and Shubbayr’ (pp. 94–95). The difference between these kinds of typological justifications for succession and Thornton’s must be that Christ’s recapitulation of a broken succession transforms it. ‘Recapitulation’ is the only way beyond Jewish, Christian, and Muslim supercessionisms that betray the word of God for a human tradition. 125  Thornton, ‘The Body of Christ in the New Testament’, p. 94.

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in the New Testament. In the case of 1 Cor. 11:23 (‘I received from the Lord that which also I delivered unto you, that the Lord Jesus on the night on which he was being delivered up took bread’), Paul had been chastising the Corinthians for their factions and their disregard of one another at the Eucharist in the immediately preceding verses (11:17–22). Thornton then related the tradition of the Last Supper that was enacted on the night when Jesus was ‘traditioned’ by Judas into the hands of the chief priests. The Corinthian sin of ‘shaming’ those who are left out of the meal makes the delivery of the apostolic teaching and eucharistic bread into a form of Judas’ delivering up of Christ. In doing this the Corinthians were ‘putting Christ to an open shame’ (Heb. 6:6).126 Thornton explains: The Last Supper took place while the treachery of Judas was actually in train. Thus the Corinthians are told that whilst re-enacting the supper in memory of the Lord’s death they were playing the traitor’s part. This is aimed at the local elders, one of whom must have presided at the eucharist. To them a trust was committed by the apostle who in turn received it ‘from the Lord.’ As a faithful steward he had delivered to them the Eucharistic mystery with all that it signified. In betraying this trust they had renewed the sin of Judas. But further, he who so presided was in loco Christi. He would repeat the words and acts of the Lord as treasured in the tradition handed over by the apostle. Yet in ‘not discerning the body’ he was in fact more truly representative of Judas than of Christ.127 Here Thornton clearly admitted that the sin of Judas could be repeated even in the apostolic succession established by Jesus. But if the succession was not a bulwark against such betrayal, then the issue of theodicy opened up by Christian division is not just a Free Church problem, but a problem for catholics also. Had Thornton only explicitly admitted this, he would have been brought closer to the position of South India’s leading ecumenist, Lesslie Newbigin, who held that all ministries had ‘a defect of order and power’ due to division.128 What then does God do with apostolic evil, since he is the one who established the apostolic succession? Thornton, like Barth a few years earlier, highlighted how paradosis is used to express the freedom with which the Father 126  Thornton, The Common Life in the Body of Christ, pp. 340–1. 127  Thornton, ‘The Body of Christ in the New Testament’, p. 95. 128  Sundkler, Church of South India, p. 313. Newbigin’s position does not solve the problem of whether the episcopate is essential, but it can be read as an admission of certain epistemological defects caused by a division of which we simply do not have the ‘power’ to formulate solutions.

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‘hands over’ Jesus to the Servant’s death, thereby encompassing the traitor’s paradosis within Christ’s own mission.129 Indeed, Thornton beautifully weaved a figural argument that embedded this all in the Old Testament. There is little space to explore these connections, only to relate one important verb for Thornton, tithemi. Aside from its suggestive usage in the Prophets, Thornton observed that it is an active verb used both of Jesus’ ‘laying down’ of his life for his friends (John 10:17–18), and of Jesus’ ‘appointment’ of Apostles: ‘Ye did not choose me, but I chose you and appointed you …’ (John 15:16).130 Lampe thoroughly objected to the way in which Thornton went on to elaborate as ‘[a]n … implausible piece of almost incredibly involved typology, founded upon purely verbal echoes without any reference either to the context or to the sense of the texts which have been assembled at random from different parts of the Bible’.131 He excitedly concluded that ‘[t]his sort of typology is very dangerous. It lends itself to the varied and unlimited exercise of private ingenuity, there is no means of control by which its speculations can be checked, it rests upon a view of Scripture which is unhistorical and pre-rather than post-critical.’132 One can fairly criticize Thornton for not following his reflections on theodicy and ministry with practical, ecumenical proposals. Due to the epistemological effects of sin, such proposals obviously do not allow simple answers, such as one denomination capitulating to the other. Though his theology was far from simple, there are still traces in Thornton of a Liberal-Catholic selfunderstanding that he and his party possessed the best synthesis of old and new.133 129  Thornton, ‘The Body of Christ in the New Testament’, p. 97. See Karl Barth, Church Dogmatics, II.2 (Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1957), pp. 279, 458–506. The German original was published in 1942. 130  Thornton, ‘The Body of Christ in the New Testament’, pp. 102–3. 131  Lampe, ‘The Reasonableness of Typology’, p. 37. 132  Lampe, ‘The Reasonableness of Typology’, p. 38. 133  In November 1945 Geoffrey Fisher, the Archbishop of Canterbury, invited Gregory Dix to convene a group of Anglo-Catholics to discuss these four questions: (i) What is the underlying cause – philosophical or theological – of the contrast or conflict between the Catholic and Protestant traditions? (ii) What are the fundamental points of doctrine at which the contrast or conflict crystallizes? (iii) Is a synthesis at these points possible? (iv) If a synthesis is not possible, can they co-exist within one ecclesiastical body, and under what conditions? Among the many who participated were Austin Farrer, T. S. Eliot, A. G. Hebert, Michael Ramsey, and Lionel Thornton. What they set forth was a charitable and sophisticated analysis of the problems of ecumenical reunion from an AngloCatholic perspective. Thornton’s unpublished papers include a manuscript of a report on ‘The Primitive Wholeness’ that was given to the group, a theme central to his 1950 work Revelation and the Modern World. The first chapter of the report is precisely on this theme. The Archbishop wrote a foreword to the pamphlet characterizing the report as largely

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His theology of paradosis does, however, offer hope insofar as Christ’s voluntary self-delivery recapitulates and masters the traitorous delivery of his earthly ministers. This goes further than Lampe could achieve by his own logically inconsistent method of typology. It is a ‘dangerous’ reading inasmuch as it casts biblical judgement over the divided churches and parties, including both Lampe’s and Thornton’s. Indeed, it is positively subversive of some of Thornton’s own stances. Furthermore – and despite the fact that Lampe explicitly rejected ‘edification’ as a criterion – it is far from ‘unchecked’ since the Form of the Servant is the criterion by which all biblical associations are judged.134

concerned to avoid wrong ecumenical methods rather than to elaborate a right one. This was its weakness. Although the Anglo-Catholics indeed claimed that no group in divided Christendom could fully manifest the Church’s primitive unity, they no doubt believed they represented the best available option. See Catholicity: A Study In The Conflict Of Christian Traditions In The West, Being A Report Presented To His Grace The Archbishop Of Canterbury (Westminster: Dacre Press, 1947), pp. 9–10. 134  Lampe, ‘Typological Exegesis,’ p. 207.

Chapter 3

‘Out of Conflict – Development’: the Doctrine of Eucharistic Sacrifice in Twentieth-century Anglo-Catholicism Hugh Bowron 1 Introduction The second phase of what emerged from the Oxford Movement generated a revolution in the practice of worship in the Victorian Anglican Churches. At the heart of this renewal agenda was the six-point programme of ritualist Anglo-Catholicism as adopted by the English Church Union: lighted candles on the altar (popularly known as the ‘crucifix and big six’), the use of communion wafer breads, the admixture of water with the wine at the offertory, the adopting of the eastward position by the priest at the altar, the use of incense, and the wearing of eucharistic vestments. All of these changes had a particular impact on the celebration of the Eucharist, which many Anglo-Catholics now sought to restore to the central place it had occupied in Sunday worship prior to the elevation of Morning Prayer and the Litany from the time of the English Reformation. Historical assessments of the late nineteenth-century Anglo-Catholics followed a well-worn path until 1996 when John Shelton Read’s Glorious Battle offered a new perspective on what underlay this narrative of conflict. An American sociologist, Read drew a parallel between Victorian ritualist priests and the youth movement of the 1960s.1 Far from being misunderstood and unfairly persecuted pioneers of what would later become standard liturgical fare in many Anglican parishes, theirs was a generation of young men who had gone looking for trouble both because they wanted to shock and outrage their parents and authority figures, and because they understood the value of conflict and scandalised publicity in drawing attention to what they were doing and in attracting new recruits. Their novelty conveyed the impression that they were at the cutting edge of revolutionary change, and also exaggerated the actual strength of their movement, while at the same time infusing it with the 1  John Shelton Read, Glorious Battle: The Cultural Politics of Victorian Anglo-Catholicism (Nashville and London: Vanderbilt University Press, 1996), pp. xx, xxi, xxiii, 264.

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imaginative power of the Romantic Movement that then dominated European culture. The propellant force of the Romantic Movement gave the Oxford Movement its trademark quality of enthusiasm that marked it off from the more cautious and sober high Church movement that had preceded it. As Owen Chadwick noted, Probably it is this element of feeling, the desire to use poetry as a vehicle of religious language, the sense of awe and mystery in religion, the profundity of reverence, the concern with the conscience not only by way of duty, but by growth towards holiness, which marks the vague distinction between the old-fashioned high Churchmen and the Oxford men.2 This switch of sensibilities towards an emphasis on feeling was there right from the Tractarian beginnings of the movement for, as one literary critic notes, Ideas, which in theology have become matter of course and inert, may become alive and drastically innovative when transferred – as Keble patently transferred them – into the alien soil of aesthetics. Keble himself gives us the clue to the source of his formulas, in his frequent allusions to poetry as something near allied to religion, almost a sacrament.3 Enthusiasm and feeling became allied to a combative spirit, first modelled by Newman and then developed further by the Ritualists. We can note also that the Sheldon thesis is also sustained by the more sober assessment of Paul Avis (in Anglicanism and the Christian Church) that the tension and polarising effects of the Oxford Movement were an inevitable concomitant of the beneficial effects of this reform and renewal movement. As he put it, ‘The conflict was a condition of the renewal; the renewal was at the price of the conflict. These twin manifestations of the nineteenth-century Church of England have contributed significantly to making contemporary Anglicanism what it is today.’4

2  Owen Chadwick, The Mind of the Oxford Movement (London: A. and C. Black, 1960), p. 28. 3  M. H. Abrams, The Mirror and the Lamp: Romantic Theory and the Critical Tradition (New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 1958), p. 147. 4  Paul Avis, Anglicanism and the Christian Church (London and New York: T&T Clark, 2002), p. 173.

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Eucharistic Sacrifice as the Flashpoint of Conflict

In this chapter I will argue that the flash-point issue that most frequently provoked opposition to the new liturgical practices of the ritualists was the doctrine of Eucharistic Sacrifice. The wearing of eucharistic vestments was understood to reflect the conviction of the celebrant that the Mass which he was celebrating had a sacrificial dimension to it, an assessment of the Anglican rite that most nineteenth-century Anglicans believed had been written out of the Book of Common Prayer by Thomas Cranmer. Anglicans have long debated Cranmer’s thinking and beliefs about eucharistic theology at the time of the compilation of the 1549 and 1552 eucharistic rites. It is a debate unlikely to ever be resolved for, in Paul Avis’ words, ‘There are questions of consistency as well as interpretation. Reading Cranmer makes one wonder how far he really understood the issues and whether sometimes he even knew his own mind.’5 It is Cranmer’s actions rather than his state of mind that is crucial here. By cutting the Prayer of Consecration in half in the 1552 edition of the Prayer Book he ruled out any possible interpretation of the Eucharist as the Western Church had traditionally understood it. The key excisions were: 1. The removal, just before the words of institution, of the Epiclesis: ‘Hear us O merciful Father we beseech thee; and with thy Holy Spirit and Word vouchsafe to bless and sanctify these thy gifts and creatures of bread and wine, that they may be unto us the Body and Blood of thy most dearly beloved Son Jesus Christ …’. 2. Immediately after the words of institution the removal of the words ‘we thy humble servants do celebrate and make here before thine divine Majesty, with these thy holy gifts, the memorial which thy Son hath willed us to make; having in remembrance his blessed passion, mighty resurrection, and glorious ascension’, which could be interpreted as presenting before the Father the saving actions of the Son as a key action in the Mass on behalf of the worshippers. 3. A paragraph further on from the above, the removal of the words, ‘humbly beseeching thee, that whosoever shall be partakers of this holy Communion may worthily receive the most precious Body and Blood of they Son Jesus Christ; and be fulfilled with thy grace and heavenly benediction, and made one body with thy Son Jesus Christ, that he may dwell in them, and they in him.’ The italicised words have a collective 5  Paul Avis, The Identity of Anglicanism: Essentials of Anglican Ecclesiology, (London and New York: T&T Clark, 2007), p. 87.

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and corporate sense of the Mass as uniting the believer with the body of Christ, the Pauline metaphor for the Church, which indicates a very thick theological description of the Church which was unpalatable to Protestant Reformers. Cranmer took exception to the italicised words because they seemed to him to imply that human acts could bring about union with Christ. 4. In the final paragraph, the removal of the words, ‘And although we be unworthy through our manifold sins to offer unto thee any sacrifice, yet we beseech thee to accept this our bounden duty and service, and command these our prayers and supplications, by the ministry of thy holy angels, to be brought up into thy holy tabernacle before the sight of thy divine Majesty.’ The italicised words clearly state the intention that this offerings of the bread and wine are to be presented and accepted at the heavenly altar to be united to Christ’s heavenly offering of himself, and then to be given back as Christ’s body and blood to be food for the worshippers. For Cranmer, the Eucharist was an offering of praise and thanksgiving on the part of its participants. He wanted to emphasise the once and for all nature of Christ’s death on the Cross, and prevent the re-emergence of the kind of theology that had underpinned the chantry chapels and a supplicatory understanding of offering in the Eucharist. The followers of the Oxford Movement clearly understood the implications of what he had done in truncating the Canon of the Mass, and tried to overcome this by a variety of extraordinary measures, ranging from the creation of The English Missal, in which portions of the Roman rite were interpolated into the Book of Common Prayer Canon, through promoting Prayer Book reform, a process which would culminate in the Book of Common Prayer of 1928, to in a minority of cases using the 1549 rite.6 Victorian attitudes to the doctrine of Eucharistic Sacrifice were undoubtedly complex, but many of the rank and file (clerical and lay) devoted little time to its theological nuances. It was reported that Fr Robert Dolling, the famous slum priest of Portsmouth, ‘never read books because he had better things to do with his time’.7 It was left to Charles Gore and his successors to wrestle with a problem that had only been lightly touched upon by the founding fathers of the movement. In developing this theme this chapter thus focuses on four

6  The Third Lord Halifax, Edward Wood, insisted on its use in his private Chapel, and at his Requiem in York Minster in 1959. See Owen Chadwick, Michael Ramsey: A Life (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1990), pp. 101–2. 7  Owen Chadwick, The Victorian Church (London: SCM Press, 1987), Vol. 2, p. 175.

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representative figures of Anglo-Catholic thought, namely Charles Gore, Austin Farrer, Michael Ramsey, and Rowan Williams. These theologians have been selected because they illustrate the two points that I wish to make. Rather than view Anglo-Catholicism as a prematurely spent force by the 1930s, I offer the view that it retained an intellectual standing in the decades that followed, which led it to exert disproportionate influence on the liturgical character of the Church of England and Anglicanism generally. Indeed, the theologians under discussion exhibited an increasing sophistication in their ability to construct a theological framework for eucharistic worship. Furthermore the doctrine of Eucharistic Sacrifice has developed in interesting and unexpected ways, particularly at the hands of Rowan Williams whose approach to Eucharistic Sacrifice will constitute a significant section of this chapter. I conclude that a singular achievement of the Oxford Movement was to persuade the Church of England grudgingly and cautiously to accept the doctrine of Eucharistic Sacrifice as a legitimate Anglican understanding of eucharistic worship. 3

From Pusey to Gore: the Real Presence in Late Nineteenth-century Anglicanism

As early as 1836 Edward Bouverie Pusey had been moved (in Tract 81) to address the topic of Eucharistic Sacrifice, drawing extensively on patristic authorities: They (the Patristic Fathers) presented to the Almighty Father the symbols and memorials of the meritorious Death and Passion of His OnlyBegotten and Well-beloved Son, and besought Him by that precious Sacrifice to look graciously upon the Church which he had purchased with his own Blood – offering the memorials of that same Sacrifice which he, our great High-Priest, made once for all, and now being entered within the veil, unceasingly presents before the Father, and the representation of which He has commanded us to make.8 For Pusey, a deeply held doctrine of baptismal regeneration was inextricably intertwined with eucharistic doctrine so as to address the pastoral problem most on his mind, that of post-baptismal sin. The ‘commemorative sacrifice’ served to generate effective and powerful prayer that released the penitent from the hindering power of sin. It was this tool of the Kingdom which was 8  Edward Pusey, Tracts for the Times: Tract 81 (London: Gilbert and Rivington, 1839), p. 5.

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most likely to put the penitent back in communion with God. The Eucharist did not repeat the sacrifice of Calvary, but rather re-presented it to the Father in such a way as to benefit the communicant. As Christ, the great high priest, continually interceded for sinners with his Body and Blood, the Eucharist served as a point of connection to this intercessory ministry. The decades following the Tractarian first phase of the Oxford Movement were not marked by further considered theological reflection on the topic of Eucharistic Sacrifice. The Ritualists were pre-occupied by controversy and the hard work required for parish development. They asserted the doctrine without developing it. However, as Charles Gore emerged as a prominent Anglican thinker in the wake of Lux Mundi (1889) there was a renewed interest in the theological basis of eucharistic teaching. In The Body of Christ (1901) Gore turned his attention to the question of Eucharistic Sacrifice.9 For Gore the point and purpose of the Eucharist was a communion through which the believer was united to God. He therefore tried to put an end to the practice, common in a number of Anglo-Catholic parishes, of the 11 o’clock ‘non-communicating’ High Mass, the grandest and most well attended of the Sunday Services, at which only the clergy communicated, since the point of the service was to plead the sacrifice of Calvary on behalf of the Church. Two cardinal errors, Gore maintained, were committed by such an approach. In the first place, it separated communion from sacrifice, despite the fact that there can be no sacrifice without communion.10 In the second place it helped promote a more Roman attitude to the doctrine of eucharistic presence. For Gore, the Eucharist was ‘a solemn commemoration before God of the sacrificial death of Christ. But the death, or the humiliation which belongs to the death, is commemorated only, not renewed or repeated’.11 What the Eucharist should do is to connect the worshipping community with the perpetual intercessory ministry of Christ, the great high priest, as he presents himself for them in the heavenly places, or to put it another way, as he makes himself present among them in their eucharistic worship.12 Gore discerned two main approaches to Eucharistic Sacrifice in the patristic era. Some held that the offerings of bread and wine were presented and accepted at the heavenly altar, where they were united to Christ’s heavenly 9   It should be noted here that Gore, during his years as Bishop successively of Worcester, Birmingham and Oxford, acquired a reputation for disciplining the liturgical excesses of ritualist clergy that was arguably at variance with his fundamental eucharistic theology. 10  Charles Gore, The Body of Christ: An Enquiry into the Institution and Doctrine of Holy Communion (London: John Murray, 1901), p. 203. 11  Gore, The Body of Christ, p. 175. 12  Gore, The Body of Christ, p. 183.

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offering of himself, and then given back as Christ’s body and blood to be the food of the worshippers. Others argued that the consecration of the bread and wine by the invocation of the Holy Spirit over them made them the body and blood of Christ, in such a way that the sacrifice of Christ was made present in the midst of the worshippers, who then presented it before the Father. Gore thought that these doctrines were complementary, provided that it was made clear that sacrifice is completed and perfected in communion. Communion internalises the sacrificial action of Christ in such a way as to make Christians a part of Christ’s body.13 The Church, argued Gore, can but make the appointed remembrance of Christ’s passion and death and resurrection and His second coming which she awaits, and offer to the Father the appointed symbols, praying Him by the consecrating power of the Holy Ghost to fill the sacrifice with a divine power by accepting the earthly elements at the heavenly altar.14 As Christ, the great high priest, drew his people to himself, and then offered them to the Father, so the sacrifice that was ultimately offered was the Church itself.15 4

Twentieth-century Innovators: Austin Farrer and Michael Ramsey

Austin Farrer represented the next generation of Anglo-Catholics, but lacked the Anglican heritage of earlier theologians, being the son of a Baptist minister. His conversion to Anglo-Catholicism occurred at Oxford as he worshipped at St Barnabas, Jericho, and he became deeply immersed in the spirituality of the Book of Common Prayer. After ordination, most of his ministry was in Oxford, ultimately as Warden of Keble College, where he died in post in 1968. Farrer was something of a maverick as a theologian, with his Thomism putting him at odds with the empiricism of contemporary philosophers, and his typological reading of Scripture setting him apart from New Testament critical scholarship. For Farrer, the Bible does not so much present us with propositional truths as with images, which transform us as we contemplate them and engage with them. These ‘tremendous images’, as he calls them, are essential 13  Kenneth Stevenson, ‘Michael Ramsey on the Eucharist’, International Journal for the Study of the Christian Church 2:1 (2002), pp. 38–49, esp. pp. 42–4. 14  Gore, The Body of Christ, pp. 211–2. 15  Gore, The Body of Christ, pp. 209, 208.

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and non-negotiable pathways to apprehending God; they are that which God provides for our benefit, since we are incapable of dispensing with the images needed to ‘seize an imageless truth’.16 Examples of these images include, ‘the Kingdom of God, the Son of Man, Israel as the human family of God and Christ’s own redemptive suffering’.17 It is this last image that is at the heart of the ‘tremendous image’ of the Eucharist. To discern the sacrificial dimension of the Eucharist is to become aware that, as human beings present their gifts to God in the sacred meal, they thereby make them over to God, thus allowing them to ‘become sacred by becoming God’s peculiar possession’. God changes the gifts in the act of receiving them by symbolic appropriation. Farrer describes this process by means of a striking image: ‘His altar devoured the sacrifice symbolically: such symbolic consumption expressing God’s real acceptance of his people’s offerings.’18 When the Great Thanksgiving prayer is said over the bread and wine this establishes what Farrer calls an ‘equivalence’ between Christ’s universal sacrifice, in its all-encompassing, unrepeatable and unique status, and the particular expression of it that takes place in a particular eucharistic celebration. The universal ripples out into that particular showing forth of it in that particular place and time with those particular people in an equivalent manner. What takes place in this transaction is that the worship assembly is caught up in a movement of offering towards the Father of the only original gift it has available, Christ’s equivalent expression of his unique total offering of self on our behalf to the Father. As Christ, as it were, sacrifices himself alongside the worshippers, he links them to himself, making them deeply associated with him through the metaphor of becoming his body. ‘Christ, sacrificing himself, joins us with him in sacrificing him: Christ sacrificing himself, sacrifices us, for he has made us parts of him.’19 Just at that point, an extraordinary momentum sets in; the movement of offering changes so that Christ ends up sacrificing us, offering us to the Father. The worship assembly that started out to offer the sacrifice of Christ, is ultimately offered by him as a sacrificial community. The self-offering of the community has become the final movement of the eucharistic action. The end point of this dynamic movement of exchange is entry into the life of the Trinity: 16  Austin Farrer, The Glass of Vision (Westminster: Dacre Press, 1948), p. 10. 17  Brian Douglas, A Companion to Anglican Eucharistic Theology (Leiden: Brill, 2012), Vol. 2, p. 33. 18  Austin Farrer, The Eucharist in 1 Corinthians, cited in Douglas, A Companion to Anglican Eucharistic Theology, Vol. 2, p. 9. 19  Austin Farrer, The Crown of the Year: Weekly Paragraphs for the Holy Sacrament (Westminster: Dacre Press, 1952), p. 13.

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The disciples who were present at the Supper saw and heard Jesus Christ making eucharist to the Father over the bread and cup. They were witnesses of the intercourse between the Eternal Son and his Eternal Father. Mortal ears and eyes at that moment perceived the movement of speech and love which passes in the heart of the Godhead; human minds entered into that converse of the Divine Persons which is the life and happiness of the Blessed Trinity … God has asked us into his house, he has spread his table before us, he has set out bread and wine. We are made one body with the Son of God, and in him converse with the Eternal Father, through the indwelling of the Holy Ghost.20 Another architect of the post-war rediscovery of Anglican eucharistic theology was Michael Ramsey, a contemporary and friend of Austin Farrer, with whom he had trained at Cuddesdon Theological College and with whom he shared a Free Church upbringing. Unlike Farrer, however, Ramsey soon passed from a career as an academic theologian to an ascent of the episcopal hierarchy rising from Bishop of Durham, to Archbishop of York, and ultimately to the See of Canterbury in 1961. In some ways, Ramsey saw himself as an heir of Gore. But his admiration for Gore did not prevent him from critiquing Gore’s doctrine of Eucharistic Sacrifice. He thought that Gore’s emphasis on Eucharistic Sacrifice being consummated in communion served to limit the Real Presence to the liturgy itself, and to rule out extra-liturgical devotion to the Reserved Sacrament, which was such a cornerstone of Ramsey’s prayer life. He rather enjoyed the sorts of devotional practices that Gore had tried to stamp out in the Diocese of Oxford.21 Ironically, Gore’s contribution to the Parish Communion movement had served to diminish the doctrine of Eucharistic Sacrifice, and the theology of adoration that generally accompanied Anglo-Catholic worship. Gore’s emphasis on communion as the consummation of the Eucharist not only put the Eucharist at the centre of Anglican Sunday worship in many Churches, but reinforced its corporate nature as the work of the entire people of God. Ramsey, however, felt that its stress on fellowship and community participation had introduced some sentimental and superficial customs, which had trivialised the Eucharist. He described the offertory procession, in which lay people brought the bread and wine and money forward from the back of the Church to be laid on the altar just before the Great Thanksgiving Prayer as ‘a shallow 20  Farrer, The Crown of the Year, p. 37. 21  See Owen Chadwick, Michael Ramsey: A Life (Clarendon Press: Oxford, 1990), pp. 14, 17, 22, 23, 29, 47, 83, 96, 98, 101, 103, 179, 181, 190, 314, 319, 324, 332, 375–6.

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and romantic sort of Pelagianism’, because it was all about the believers’ efforts brought before God, rather than Christ’s costly gift of himself on the Cross.22 The informal atmosphere of the Parish Communion with its bright and breezy hymns and cheerful style led Ramsey to reflect that he too often missed ‘the due recognition in teaching and atmosphere and choice of hymns, of the awful fact of the one sufficient sacrifice of Our Lord on Calvary’. The fellowship that such services were trying to promote tended to be based on human affinity and preference rather than the theological fact that Christian fellowship was primarily about ‘bringing [people] into participation in our Lord, in his broken body’.23 A proper understanding of participation in the Eucharist involved more than merely those who were attending that particular service, since it was an act of worship that connected with the communion of saints, the Christian community extending across time and space, and reflected the union of the earthly table with the heavenly altar. 5

Catholicity Renewed? Rowan Williams and Eucharistic Sacrifice

Rowan Williams’ career trajectory is too well known to need rehearsing here, but it is noteworthy that he shares with Farrer and Ramsey a Free Church background, in his case that of Welsh Presbyterianism. Indeed, part of AngloCatholicism’s generativity throughout the twentieth century has been its ability to recruit and co-opt fine minds from Free Church backgrounds (Archbishop Cosmo Gordon Lang was also raised a Presbyterian in the established Church of Scotland.) Perhaps it is Williams’ Presbyterian background that makes him acutely aware of Calvin’s searching critique of the Catholic doctrine of Eucharistic sacrifice. In Eucharistic Sacrifice: The Roots of a Metaphor he notes Calvin’s argument that if the Eucharist activates the effects of Calvary as past event into the present in such a way as to heal present sinfulness, this implies that Calvary does not have the power to do this in its own right. In fact, Christ’s saving work does not need to be reactivated by the Eucharist; he has sovereign power to apply the effects of Calvary to believers’ lives here and now without priestly assistance. Nor is Christ to be reduced to a mere passive object in the Church’s 22  Michael Ramsey, ‘The Parish Communion’, Durham Essays and Addresses (London: SPCK, 1956), p. 18. 23  Stevenson, ‘Michael Ramsey on the Eucharist’, p. 46. For a fuller description of Ramsey’s theology of Eucharistic Sacrifice see Michael Ramsey, The Gospel and the Catholic Church (London: SPCK, 1990), pp. 113–8.

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worship, immobilised by the cultic activity of the Church’s priests, and thus vulnerable to being manipulated by a sacred caste for its own particular purposes. Christ is always agent and initiator in the pleading of his sacrifice, a saving event that is not trapped in the past, fading in its effects with the passage of time, and which does not require the repeated celebration of the Eucharist to release its effects into the present. Calvary is neither repeatable nor representable; it alone is the crucial intersection of history and eternity, which is why the doctrine of Eucharistic Sacrifice, for Calvin, represents a paganization of Christianity.24 Williams sets out to avoid these pitfalls by positing that the glorified Christ, crucified and risen, is eternally active towards God the Father on behalf of the worshipping assembly, drawing eucharistic participants into the eternal movement of self-giving love that the Son or Word directs towards the God whom Jesus calls ‘Abba’. He assumes that the sacrifice of the Cross is the transcription into this world’s terms of the Son’s movement of love towards the Father in heaven. In the Eucharist, the worshippers’ prayers are swept into that current, setting them free to share in the Son’s self-giving. The giving of thanks over the elements renews for them the covenant made by God in Christ, and the work of God in the Cross is again applied to them, in word and action, in body and soul, so that the presence that is appropriate and intelligible in the Eucharist is neither the presence of an idea in their minds, nor is it the presence of a uniquely sacred object on the Holy Table. It is the presence of an active Christ, moving in love not only towards the Father but towards the worshippers.25 When Christians celebrate the Eucharist they integrate themselves into the patterns of Trinitarian love circulating through the world, and join in the Son’s movement of love and obedience towards the Father. Consequently the Eucharist does nothing to God, nor are priests the privileged ambassadors of this access to the trinitarian life. There have been descriptions of the Eucharist as bringing heaven down to earth, or of manifesting the life of the Kingdom in our midst. Williams only accepts this latter definition in a highly qualified 24  Rowan Williams, Eucharistic Sacrifice: The Roots of a Metaphor (Grove Liturgical Study no 31, Bramcote, Notts, 1982), pp. 3–4. Williams sources Calvin’s critique from Calvin’s Commentaries: The Epistle of Paul the Apostle to the Hebrews and the First and Second Epistles of St. Peter, translated by W. B. Johnston (Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1963), pp. 101, 139. See John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, ed. John T. McNeill, trans. Ford Lewis Battles (Philadelphia, PA: Westminster Press, 1960), IV.18.5, 6, 7,12. 25  Rowan Williams, ‘Foreword,’ in H. R. McAdoo and Kenneth Stevenson (eds), The Mystery of the Eucharist in the Anglican Tradition (Eugene OR: Wipf and Stock, 2008), pp. 8–9. Williams’ theology of the Eucharist can be found in two essays: ‘The Nature of a Sacrament’ and ‘Sacraments of the New Society’, in Rowan Williams, On Christian Theology (Oxford: Blackwell, 2000), pp. 197–221.

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sense, shorn of any supernatural glamour or ecclesial romanticism. The world is not a naturally epiphanic or sacramental reality and the Kingdom of God can only be spoken of as another reality in the sense that the Australian novelist Patrick White writes of there being, ‘another world, but it is the same as this one’.26 Our experience of the world is determined by the capacity of human beings to make signs to interpret it. Sometimes they change the ordering and the meaning of these signs in such a way as to radically change their understanding of reality. Williams describes Jesus of Nazareth as ‘a sign-maker of a disturbingly revolutionary kind’.27 On Maundy Thursday he ‘doubled’ the meaning of the Passover in such a way as to give himself over into the hands of his disciples, to pass over into their lives in the most complete and vulnerable way. In that sense, Calvary amplifies and develops what had already happened at the Last Supper and pivots off the notion of gift in the most extraordinary sense: A gift which creates the profoundest participation involves the profoundest cost. So, on the one hand, God acts, offers, gives, in order to bring creation into fellowship with him; and, because that fellowship is so strange to fearful, self-enclosed, human beings, it requires a uniquely creative gift – a gift which involves God’s manifesting himself without power or threat. He ‘distances’ himself from the stability of his divine life in order to share the vulnerability and darkness of mortal men and women. By the ‘gift’ of his presence – the presence in our world of an unreserved compassion and an unrestricted hope – he establishes communion; but this can be clearly shown only in conditions of final rejection and dereliction. The gift is consummated on the cross.28 Rowan Williams’s method in his Eucharistic theology has been described by Brian Douglas as ‘education as emancipation’.29 I would prefer to call it education by transformation. The Eucharist ushers its participants into the Kingdom in an unexpected, uncomfortable and disturbing way. It opens their eyes to the world of suffering, struggling humanity that is infused with the divine compassion. It breaks down their tight, tidy, well-organised filters against this surrounding appalling reality. A complacent, well-insulated, highly defended 26  Williams, On Christian Theology, pp. 201, 207. 27  Williams, On Christian Theology, p. 200. 28  Williams, Eucharistic Sacrifice, p. 28. 29  Douglas, A Companion to Anglican Eucharistic Theology, Vol. 2, p. 3.

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community is transformed into a sacrificial community that is prepared to do something about the situation. As Williams puts it: If we are to be fully a gift to the Father, given by ourselves yet also by and through the crucified Jesus, by our association with that prior gift, we must also bear the cost – which is the loss of all we do and all we possess to defend ourselves against God and others and death … against sharing the real vulnerability of the finite world, against the real need and poverty of ourselves and our brothers and sisters. The cost is the loss of images and fantasies, of clear, tight frontiers to the self. If we can even begin to give in this way, it is only because of the depth of the assurance implied in the gift given us on Calvary.30 This then is what Williams means by the sacrifice of the Eucharist – not only does Christ as priest offer the Church to the Father in solidarity with his gift of self, but he also invades the Church in this action in an awakening initiative to make it a part of the suffering and sacrificial life of the Kingdom. Here we can see indications of the debt Williams owes to Donald MacKinnon, Norris Hulse Professor of Divinity during Williams’ undergraduate days at Cambridge, and intellectual tap root of so much of his theological world view. As the apostle of ‘anguished Anglicanism’, MacKinnon was often ignored or widely misunderstood in his own day, but in his thinking arguably lives on through his influence on his former student Rowan Williams.31 One result of this is to lead Williams to take a most un-Anglo-Catholic view of the Church, which he expressed in a letter to Dr Andrei Muller: I think that those of us who were marked by [MacKinnon] were for good and all alienated from any theology that showed any facile optimism about the Church in itself. There had to be – you could say – a way out from the Church; you had to understand that the Church’s existence was secondary and derivative, utterly of a different order from God’s act.32 30  Williams, Eucharistic Sacrifice, p. 29. 31  In a private conversation, Williams summed up MacKinnon’s influence on him in this way: ‘There are times in the life of the Church when anguished hand wringing is the appropriate response to what is going on within it … but later on MacKinnon’s influence on me in this regard was counterbalanced by my appropriation of Russian Orthodoxy’s pneumatology and eschatology as part of my doctoral studies.’ Rowan Williams, Interview by Hugh Bowron, Cambridge, 14 October 2014. 32  Rowan Williams, Letter to Andrei Muller 4 February 2008, in Dr Muller’s possession.

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It is illuminating to contrast this with the way that Gore conceived of his ecclesiology and its implications for his sacramental and liturgical theology: The Church embodies the same principles as the ‘Word made flesh,’ that is, the expression and communication of the spiritual and divine through what is material and human. It is a human and material society. Its sacraments are visible instruments: its unity is that of a visible organization bound into one at least by the link of an apostolic succession and an historical continuity. But this visible, material human society exists to receive, to embody and to communicate a spiritual life. And this life is none other than the life of the Incarnate. The Church exists to perpetuate in every age the life of Jesus, the union of manhood with Godhead.33 Here we see the classic expression of Gore’s conception of the Church as an extension of the Incarnation. MacKinnon had perceived the blind spots in Anglo-Catholic ecclesiology, not least the obvious problems. Gore’s notion of the Church as an extension of the Incarnation was in contradicting tension with his kenotic Christology. According to Williams, he developed a suspicion that the sacramentality that distinguishes high-Church traditions of worship can so easily degenerate into what MacKinnon would later call an ecclesiological fundamentalism … one of the reasons why MacKinnon considers this so dangerous is that it can encourage a desire to escape into a kind of fantasy world that cultivates a collective ecclesial forgetting of both the tragic realities of life and the Church’s complicity in the structures of worldly power that perpetuate violence in the name of comfort, or peace, or whatever.34 Mackinnon had also come to identify a facile optimism in the Christendom group, to which he had once belonged, and in the Malvern Conference’s social planning for a post-war world, that ignored the prophetic witness of the Church. Rather than helping to bring about the reordering of society or making the world habitable for the children of God, the Church should be pointing

33  Charles Gore, The Incarnation of the Son of God: Being the Bampton Lectures for the Year 1891 (London: John Murray, 1891), p. 219. 34  Williams, Letter to Andrei Muller, 4 February 2008.

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to the theologia crucis at the centre of its life that made its own existence both a question and a scandal to its surrounding society and culture.35 The Church consequently is the place where the new humanity comes into existence and becomes available to the world. Christ’s resurrection displayed and deployed the second Adam, the model man, the shining exemplar of the new humanity, who defines what a human being should be. The Church is the community of Christ’s junior brothers and sisters, who have been filiated to him by baptism. This filiation process is what goes on in the life of the Church, and the Church’s primary task is to spread filiation to Jesus Christ throughout the world, to draw all the peoples of the world into becoming the new humanity.36 This is why Christ moves in power and love amongst his people in the eucharistic action in such a way as to remind them forcefully of the suffering humanity beyond the Church’s walls. He wishes to motivate them and inspire them to spread the filiation process far and wide. The eucharistic action bonds the worshippers to him as his junior brothers and sisters, his body in that place and time. It also makes them into the sacrificial community that will become involved in the filiation business far and wide. Williams’ perspective on Eucharistic Sacrifice also sheds light on his pneumatology. What the Holy Spirit does is to immerse eucharistic worshippers in the stream of the Son’s perpetual movement of love and obedience to the Father (to use an Augustinian image). It is this process which introjects worshippers into the circulating rhythm of trinitarian love throughout the world. More broadly it is the connection point in the process of filiation into the new humanity. Its primary task is to be about the Pauline task of affiliating and forming believers in such a way that they may grow to their full stature in the Son. The Holy Spirit is powerfully present and at work in the Eucharist to bring about this filiation and formation process. 6 Conclusion What the ritualist priests of Victorian Britain achieved was to reactivate the eucharistic core of Catholic worship in the Book of Common Prayer:

35  Donald MacKinnon, ‘Revelation and Social Justice’, in William Temple (ed.), Malvern 1941: The Life of the Church and the Order of Society: Being the Proceedings of the Archbishop of York’s Conference (London: Longmans, Green and Co, 1941), pp. 81–96. 36  Rowan Williams, ‘Trinity and Revelation’, in On Christian Theology, pp. 131–47.

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Thanks to Cranmer’s genius and the moderation of the Anglican Reformation, the Eucharistic core of catholic worship remained embedded in the Prayer Book, waiting to be reactivated. Stimulated first by the catholic revival, then by the modern liturgical movement and the Ecumenical Movement, the Eucharistic transformation of liturgical practice has now been effected in many parts of the Anglican world.37 From the moment that this dormant inheritance was revived, the doctrine of Eucharistic Sacrifice was bound to become a matter of controversy in the Church of England. It is a mark of the Ritualists’ achievement in this area that the 1981 Final Report of the Anglican-Roman Catholic International Commission would say this: God has given the eucharist to his Church as a means through which the atoning work of Christ on the cross is proclaimed and made effective in the life of the Church … In the eucharistic prayer the Church continues to make a perpetual memorial of Christ’s death, and his members, united with God and one another, give thanks for all his mercies, entreat the benefits of his passion on behalf of the whole Church, participate in these benefits and enter into the movement of his self-offering.38 In other words, the Church of England had now owned the doctrine of Eucharistic Sacrifice, albeit in a cautious and careful way. Looking at the common threads that run through the thinking of the four theologians discussed in this chapter, we can see that they agree that the Church that sets out to offer Christ in the Eucharist ends up being offered by him to the Father. They also agree that for this to happen Christ must unite his people through the eucharistic action in a unity achieved through a solidarity grounded in their participation in the subsequent effects of Christ’s costly death. What remains problematic in these inheritors of the Oxford Movement is the language of bringing symbols of Christ’s passion before the Father in the Eucharist, of re-activating the effects of Calvary through the Great Thanksgiving Prayer. Williams has seen the problems stemming from Calvin’s acute critique of this sort of language in a particularly clear way, and has found a way around 37  Paul Valliere, Conciliarism: A History of Decision Making in the Church (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012), pp. 235–6. 38  Anglican-Roman Catholic International Commission, The Final Report (London: CTS/ SPCK, 1982), pp. 14–15.

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it by describing the Eucharist as a participation in the life of the Trinity, a joining in by association with the movement of Christ to the Father in love and obedience. This circulating movement of Trinitarian love is always taking place in our world, and in the Eucharist worshippers are privileged to enter into it in a particularly powerful way. Williams has also been at pains to step away from the sterile post-Reformation debates about Eucharistic Sacrifice in which Christ’s presence ends up as just an idea in the mind or an immobilized object on the altar. Williams has taken further the insight of the other writers that the community that sets out to offer and dine on the sacrificed one ends up being transformed into the sacrificial community, available for the purposes of the Kingdom. In that sense the end point of the doctrine of Eucharistic Sacrifice is to create the sacrificial community. The parallel universe thus created by this eucharistic entry into the Kingdom is thereby shorn of the romanticism and of the supernatural and ceremonial glamour so beloved of Anglo-Catholicism, and which is its seductive and not entirely helpful cultural tap root. If this alternative world seems at times a little bleak it is perhaps because Donald MacKinnon reminded its architect at an early stage in his intellectual formation of the importance of eschewing all false consolations, easy answers and facilely resolved tragedy.

Chapter 4

‘The Sacramental Universe’: Theologies of Nature in North Atlantic Anglicanism, 1922–2012 Benjamin Guyer In Nature, Man and God (1934), the published version of his Gifford Lectures, William Temple made use of a simple expression that had considerable influence upon late-twentieth century Anglican theology: ‘the sacramental universe’.1 This was the title of the penultimate chapter of Nature, Man and God, and although it originally appeared in a book about natural theology, Temple’s phrase took on a life of its own; it shaped both Anglican sacramental theology and the language of Anglican environmental concern through the end of the twentieth century. John Macquarrie opened his popular 1997 volume A Guide to the Sacraments by invoking Temple’s belief in a sacramental universe.2 Something similar was expressed by the 1998 Lambeth Conference, which declared that a ‘Biblical vision of Creation’ must affirm that ‘Creation is a web of inter-dependent relationships bound together in the Covenant which God, the Holy Trinity has established with the whole earth and every living being.’3 From this, the Lambeth Conference drew three further corollaries: i. the divine Spirit is sacramentally present in Creation, which is therefore to be treated with reverence, respect, and gratitude; ii. human beings are both co-partners with the rest of Creation and living bridges between heaven and earth, with responsibility to make personal and corporate sacrifices for the common good of all Creation; iii. the redemptive purpose of God in Jesus Christ extends to the whole of Creation. In reading this resolution alongside Temple’s expression of more than sixty years earlier, we might be tempted to conclude that twentieth-century Anglicans developed a unique and even prophetic theology of the created order as an effectual sign of divine grace. But this would be wrong; the current

1  William Temple, Nature, Man and God (London: Macmillan, 1940). 2  John Macquarrie, A Guide to the Sacraments (London: SCM Press, 1997), p. 1; Temple is an important figure in Macquarrie’s Guide and is also cited on pp. 6 and 33. 3  Resolution 1.8.

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popularity of Temple’s phrase is a development far more recent than the date of his Gifford Lectures. This essay argues that contemporary Anglican concerns with ‘the sacramental universe’ are a response to late-twentieth century fears of environmental disaster and the attendant rise of modern environmentalism. The first section below studies the development of Temple’s sacramental theology, which occurred in conversation with the work of Oliver Quick. The second and third sections turn to the reception of Temple’s thought during the early postwar period and then in the 1960s. As will be seen, Temple was not initially known for his fusion of sacramental with natural theology. The fourth section looks at how this perception of Temple changed in the early 1970s. Because of the influential contributions of Arthur Peacocke, the 1974 Church of England report Man and Nature initiated an environmental turn in readings of Temple. The essay concludes by briefly outlining the formation of the Anglican Communion Environmental Network amid continued theological debate about the sacramentality of creation. However, despite surveying a key theme in twentiethcentury Anglican theology, the scope of the present chapter is restricted in three ways. First, it focuses primarily on Anglican thought and practice in the North Atlantic world. Second, it does not study the ways in which environmental concerns shaped the liturgical revisions of the late-twentieth century. Third, it details neither the ecumenical reception of Temple nor ecumenical parallels to his thought. Because of his immense ecumenical standing, the phrase ‘the sacramental universe’ influenced Christians beyond the Anglican Communion, but such developments are outside the concern of the present chapter.4

4  Nonetheless, the following non-Anglican sources should be consulted: Ernest J. Fiedler and R. Benjamin Garrison, The Sacraments: An Experiment in Ecumenical Honesty (Nashville, TN: Abingdon Press and Fides Publishers, 1969); James F. White, The Sacraments in Protestant Practice and Faith (Nashville, TN: Abingdon Press, 1999). Temple’s influence can also be seen in Archibald Allan Bowman, A Sacramental Universe: Being a Study in the Metaphysics of Experience (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press and London: Oxford University Press, 1939). Donald Baillie, The Theology of the Sacraments (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1957), contains a section entitled ‘a sacramental universe’ (pp. 42–7); later Baillie argued, ‘The sacraments of the Christian Church are not arbitrary symbols chosen from time to time against the background of a sacramental universe …They are something more’ (p. 55). He did not reference Temple but, in a discussion on the Eucharist, he cited Oliver Quick’s The Christian Sacraments (p. 119). This list is undoubtedly incomplete. For a discussion of some similar developments in Roman Catholicism, see Keith Douglass Warner, OFM, ‘The Greening of American Catholicism: Identity, Conversion, and Continuity’, Religion and American Culture: A Journal of Interpretation 18:1 (2008), pp. 113–42.

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Redefining ‘Sacrament’

After the First World War, three works of Anglican theology collectively advanced a newly expansive understanding of the sacraments. Two of these titles, Christus Veritas (1924) and Nature, Man and God (1934), were by William Temple, successively Archbishop of York (1929–42) and Archbishop of Canterbury (1942–4). The third volume was The Christian Sacraments (1927) by Oliver Quick, who occupied several successive canonries in the Church of England before becoming Regius Professor of Divinity in the University of Oxford. Temple is the better known theologian today, but all three books were mainstays of Anglican publishing for several decades. Temple’s volumes saw nine impressions each, with Christus Veritas last printed in 1962 and Nature, Man and God last printed in 1964. The Christian Sacraments saw the last of its thirteen impressions in 1964 as well, making it slightly more popular than either of Temple’s works. The two authors were close friends, and served together on both the Church of England’s 1922 Commission on Christian Doctrine and on the Faith and Order ‘wing’ of the nascent ecumenical movement.5 By consulting their prefaces and footnotes, one sees that their friendship shaped their writings. Temple thanked Quick in Christus Veritas and Nature, Man and God, while Quick drew upon Temple in The Christian Sacraments.6 These three volumes belong together. Temple and Quick also had similar theological backgrounds. As clergy in the Church of England, their theology was partially shaped by the Articles of Religion (1571), which taught that sacraments were ‘sure witnesses, and effectual signs of grace, and God’s good will towards us’. This was not a new definition but merely restated the scholastic orthodoxy first codified by Peter Lombard in the Sentences (c. 1150). Lombard began his definition of ‘sacrament’ by quoting St. Augustine: ‘A sacrament is a sign of a sacred thing.’ At the end of the same section, Lombard further specified that ‘a sacrament is a visible form of an invisible grace.’7 All of the authors and writings discussed in this chapter maintained the same core understanding. But which signs were sacraments? Lombard specified seven: baptism, confirmation, the Eucharist, 5  See Alan P. F. Sell, Four Philosophical Anglicans: W. G. De Burgh, W. R. Matthews, O. C. Quick, H. A. Hodges (Farnham, Surrey: Ashgate, 2010), pp. 144–5. 6  Temple, Christus Veritas (London: Macmillan, 1954), p. x, and Nature, Man and God, pp. vii, 210n.; Oliver Quick, The Christian Sacraments (Milwaukee, WI: Morehouse, 1927), pp. 29n., 34n., and 48n. 7  The Articles of Religion (1571), Article XXV; these facets of sacramental theology come from Peter Lombard, The Sentences, Book 4: On the Doctrine of Signs, translated by Giulio Silano (Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Medieval Studies, 2010), Dist. 1, c. 2.

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penance, extreme unction, holy orders, and marriage. The Articles of Religion were more ambivalent, and defined only the Eucharist and baptism as sacraments; the other five were ‘commonly called Sacraments’ but ‘not to be counted for Sacraments of the Gospel … for that they have not any visible sign or ceremony ordained of God.’ While still accepting that sacraments were signs, Temple and Quick together recast a variety of themes and practices as potentially sacramental. Although Temple is remembered today for his discussion of the sacramental universe in Nature, Man and God, he visited this subject in two earlier works. However, it must be stressed that ‘the sacramental universe’ was never his central theological concern; it was a concept that emerged only as he wrestled with other theological issues. In a 1922 essay intended to show the inadequacy of materialism, Temple made the brief, passing comment that ‘The universe is sacramental.’8 Describing creation as a metaphysical hierarchy, he explained, ‘By this doctrine the reality of the objects in the world is not divorced from our sense of their significance.’9 Here ‘sacramental’ was defined with reference to signification – a medieval no less than modern theological emphasis. A slightly more extended analysis came two years later in Christus Veritas (the Latin translates as ‘Christ the Truth’), where he discussed creation not as an independent theological topic, but as part of a larger chapter on worship and the sacraments. Temple again used scholastic categories, and like the Articles of Religion, defined ‘sacrament’ as an ‘efficacious sign’ that unites the external with the internal.10 Unlike the Articles of Religion, he focused heavily upon the ecclesial context of the sacraments, describing the Church as the community that responds to God’s presence in Christ, and worship as the content of the Church’s response.11 Worship occurred through a variety of media, ‘by corporate silence, or by united utterance, or by symbolic action’. Insofar as these involved something both spiritual and physical, Temple believed that all could be described as ‘sacramental’.12 The worship of the Church united the subjective with the objective, and the internal with the external. Describing worship in such terms was unusual in Anglican theology, even though Temple used traditional scholastic distinctions to do so. Having proposed a sacramental theology of worship, Temple applied sacramental language in another novel way: 8   William Temple, ‘Symbolism as a Metaphysical Principle’, Mind 31 (1922), pp. 467–77. 9   Temple, ‘Symbolism as a Metaphysical Principle’, p. 475. 10  Temple, Christus Veritas, p. 232. 11  Temple, Christus Veritas, pp. 231–2. 12  Temple, Christus Veritas, p. 231.

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Thus we have the following background of the sacramental worship of the Church; the universe is the fundamental sacrament, and taken in its entirety (when of course it includes the Incarnation and Atonement) is the perfect sacrament extensively; but it only becomes this, so far as our world and human history are concerned, because within it and determining its course is the Incarnation, which is the perfect sacrament intensively – the perfect expression in a moment of what is also perfectly expressed in everlasting Time, the Will of God; resulting from the Incarnation we find the ‘Spirit-bearing body,’ which is not actually a perfect sacrament, because its members are not utterly surrendered to the spirit within it, but none the less lives by the Life which came fully into the world in Christ; as part of the life of this Body we find certain specific sacraments or sacramental acts.13 Like worship, the universe, the Incarnation, and the Church were not generally considered sacramental in earlier Anglican theology, but here again Temple relied upon traditional language. By setting the relationship of creation and the Incarnation within an external/internal dichotomy, Temple maintained a classical understanding of the sacraments as a union of the material with the spiritual. His portrayal of the Church was less coherent; despite describing it as ‘the sacrament of human nature indwelt by God’, Temple emphasized the incompleteness of the Church’s surrender to the Holy Spirit, thereby placing unspecified distance between the sacramental existence of the Church and the extensive-intensive sacramental union of Creation-Incarnation.14 In the remainder of the chapter, Temple examined the dominical sacraments in standard Anglican fashion, describing baptism as ‘the sacrament of regeneration and of incorporation into the Church’, and the Eucharist as ‘the heart of Christian worship’.15 His discussion of the dominical sacraments was vivid, coherent, and quite conventional – none of which should undermine or marginalize the innovative approach to sacramentality that Temple set forth in Christus Veritas. Three years later, Oliver Quick expanded on Temple’s ideas in The Christian Sacraments. Quick advanced one of the most extensive discussions of the sacraments in Anglican history. He defined ‘sacrament’ as ‘any spatio-temporal reality which by its occupation of space or time expresses to us God’s will and

13  Temple, Christus Veritas, p. 234. 14  Temple, Christus Veritas, p. 235. 15  Temple, Christus Veritas, pp. 234, 243.

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purpose and enables us the better to co-operate with them’.16 Quick recognized that his definition was unworkably broad; in order to overcome this difficulty, he proposed a further distinction between ‘sacrament’ and ‘sacramental’, defining the latter as those things in which ‘the outward consists of one member of a class or one part of a whole, which is severed and differentiated from the other members or parts, in order both to represent the true relation of the whole to God and to be means whereby this relation is more effectively realised’.17 With these two definitions in hand, Quick asserted that Jesus alone is ‘the perfect sacrament’, and that all other sacraments and sacramental realities must be understood in reference to him.18 This included the Church as ‘the sacrament of human society’, as well as ‘holy days as sacraments of time, and holy places as sacraments of space’.19 By applying ‘sacrament’ to such a wide variety of phenomena, Quick showed himself unwilling to be constrained by older theologies and their more restricted conceptions of sacramentality. Temple’s lauded 1934 phrase ‘the sacramental universe’ had a clear precedent in Quick’s 1927 phrase ‘a sacramental world’.20 Creation was a concept of secondary importance in The Christian Sacraments, but Quick spent more time on the topic than Temple had in Christus Veritas. Quick discussed the natural order in two ways. The first was a negative argument against ‘aesthetic sacramentalism’. He described the ‘aesthetic sacramentalist’ as someone who sees ‘in the world as a whole the sacrament of God’s self-expression, and in particular sacraments special arrangements of what is outward whereby that universal self-expression may be made more apparent and appreciable.’ Consequently, ‘the aesthetic sacramentalist … contemplates the world as the self-expression of a divine nature’.21 Quick argued that such an approach to the sacraments, however compelling on the surface, was actually inimical to the Christian faith. Aesthetic sacramentalism not only undermined the redemptive work of Christ, but also caused Christians to forget that sacraments signified not the divine in general, but God’s particular action in Jesus of Nazareth. He concluded, ‘We must move away from sacramentalism and towards sacraments. And for Christians the supreme sacrament, apart from 16  Oliver Quick, The Christian Sacraments, p. 104. For general overviews of Quick’s sacramental theology, see Sell, Four Philosophical Anglicans, pp. 184–99; Alexander J. Hughes, Oliver Quick and the Quest for a Christian Metaphysic (Farnham, Surrey: Ashgate, 2015), ch. 7 (pp. 143–71). 17  Quick, The Christian Sacraments, p. 105. 18  Quick, The Christian Sacraments, p. 105. 19  Quick, The Christian Sacraments, p. 106. 20  Quick, The Christian Sacraments, p. 2. 21  Quick, The Christian Sacraments, p. 41.

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which no other has use or meaning, is the life of Jesus Christ.’22 As the sole subject of all Christian sacramental referents, Jesus defined the sacramentality of creation as well. Quick set his second discussion of creation within a larger discussion of the Incarnation and the Atonement. Expanding the range of reference for ‘sacrament’ yet again, he defined the Atonement as ‘the sacrament of God’s power in act’ and the Incarnation as ‘the sacrament of God’s self-expression’.23 The latter description stood counter to aesthetic sacramentalism, which identified the natural order as ‘the self-expression of a divine nature’.24 By writing in such terms, Quick urged his readers to reject aesthetic sacramentalism and see Christ as the ultimate expression of divine goodness. However, this set of priorities did not lead Quick to denigrate creation or ignore its presence within the wider narrative of redemption. Rather, he argued that creation’s sacramental value was found in its capacity to function as a sign of Christ’s own perfection. Quick proposed that the term ‘Incarnation’ would someday be applied not just to Jesus but to creation as well, ‘because each is in its kind a perfect and inseparably intimate expression of God’s nature in created being’.25 The rechristening of creation would occur ‘when God’s purpose has been perfectly achieved therein’, because then – but then alone – creation would exist in perfected relation to Christ, the perfect sacrament.26 In The Christian Sacraments, creation was conceived eschatologically, which perfectly illustrated Quick’s definition of ‘sacramental’ as something intended ‘both to represent the true relation of the whole to God and to be means whereby this relation is more effectively realized’. In the recent words of Alexander J. Hughes, ‘Quick’s theory emphasizes the congruity of creation, redemption and sanctification.’27 Following a line of argument as old as Thomas Aquinas, Quick argued that grace perfected nature, rather than harming or destroying it. Temple’s Gifford Lectures of 1932–3 were delivered in a very different intellectual context from that upon which he and Quick so freely drew in Christus Veritas and The Christian Sacraments.28 Founded by Adam Lord Gifford at the end of nineteenth century, the Gifford Lectures were intended to treat natural theology as ‘the greatest of all possible sciences, indeed, in one sense, the 22  Quick, The Christian Sacraments, p. 54. 23  Quick, The Christian Sacraments, p. 93. 24  Quick, The Christian Sacraments, p. 41. 25  Quick, The Christian Sacraments, p. 102. 26  Quick, The Christian Sacraments, p. 102. 27  Hughes, Oliver Quick and the Quest for a Christian Metaphysic, p. 162. 28  For general background, see Stephen Spencer, William Temple: A Calling to Prophecy (London: SPCK, 2001), pp. 53–8.

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only science, that of Infinite Being, without reference to or reliance upon any supposed special exceptional or so-called miraculous revelation’.29 These instructions mandated that Temple pursue his work with neither normative nor prescriptive references to Christ – a constraint ideologically opposite his earlier work, and one that required him to offer a far more detailed discussion of the relationship between nature and religion than the brief consideration found in Christus Veritas. Temple acceded to Gifford’s stipulations in a roundabout way, and subversively began his lectures by questioning the viability of Lord Gifford’s requirements. In the late nineteenth century, Temple proposed, ‘the distinction between Natural and Revealed Religion was much clearer in most men’s minds that it is to-day.’30 If Gifford’s restrictions were part of a Christian theological inheritance that had since become an open question, then revelation could be reinscribed as a valid and even necessary topic of inquiry for those engaged in natural theology. Reconfiguring the relationship between natural and revealed theology was more than an intellectual exercise; it gave Temple’s work a sharp apologetic edge. In order to redefine natural theology, Temple had to reject the very distinction that defined the Gifford Lectures. ‘If Natural Theology is restricted, or restricts itself, to the study of what has never been part of a supposed revelation, then it is concerned with what is very unimportant alike to its own students and to all mankind.’31 Temple argued that the division between natural and revealed theologies should therefore be redrawn; instead of conceiving them as separate topical spheres, he proposed that their real difference was methodological.32 Turning to method enabled Temple to argue that the practitioner of natural theology had to understand religion correctly. Temple saw worship, defined as ‘total surrender’ to God, as the heart of religion.33 Through revelation, the believer ‘is delivered, not from, but to, authority, though to authority of a new kind; for the point on which he has reached personal conviction is the existence of a God entitled to exercise authority over him, and of his own consequent obligation to serve and obey that God’.34 In Temple’s newly proffered scheme, natural theology existed to interrogate these claims, but he did not believe that practitioners of natural theology had to come from outside the community of faith. Because Temple doubted that one could truly study 29  Cited in Temple, Nature, Man and God, p. 4. 30  Temple, Nature, Man and God, p. 4. 31  Temple, Nature, Man and God, p. 9. 32  Temple, Nature, Man and God, p. 10. 33  Temple, Nature, Man and God, p. 23. 34  Temple, Nature, Man and God, p. 20.

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worship without also being a worshipper,35 he further argued that the critical work of natural theology ‘must be sympathetic, or it will completely miss the mark’.36 Ideally, natural theology was self-critical when pursued by believers, and conscious of its own limitations – and therefore again self-critical – when pursued by nonbelievers. Temple did not conceive of ‘The Sacramental Universe’ as a category of natural theology; it was not methodological, and it played no part in natural theology’s interrogation of religious claims. Rather, ‘The Sacramental Universe’, the title of the nineteenth chapter of Nature, Man and God, stood in contrast to the twentieth and final chapter, revealingly entitled ‘The Hunger of Natural Religion’. Here Temple again drew upon scholastic definitions of ‘sacrament’. He averred that ‘within the sacramental scheme or order, the outward and visible sign is a necessary means for conveyance of the inward and spiritual grace, but has its whole significance in that function.’37 Sacraments, however, were neither part of nature nor part of natural theology: ‘the special importance of sacraments is a question for the dogmatic rather than for the natural theologian.’38 In arguing thus, Temple explicitly tied sacraments to religion, which in his mind was always already bound to worship. The universe becomes sacramental when worship becomes the hermeneutic applied to creation. Nature is external to the individual, but once perceived sacramentally it acquires something internal and ‘conveys … not only God’s meaning to the mind, but God Himself to the whole person of the worshipper’.39 The sacramentality of the universe emerges only in the light of revealed theology. All of this set up the argument of the last chapter, in which Temple described natural theology as ending ‘in a hunger which it cannot satisfy’.40 The believer and the nonbeliever alike needed something more than creation, because ‘Natural Theology cannot win him to worship.’41 At every turn, Christ stalked Temple’s final analysis. ‘Man cannot meet his own deepest need, nor find for himself release from his profoundest trouble. What he needs is not progress, but redemption. If the Kingdom of God is to come on earth, it must be because God first comes on earth Himself.’42 Natural theology, a method of analysis and interrogation, was

35  Temple, Nature, Man and God, p. 17. 36  Temple, Nature, Man and God, p. 27. 37  Temple, Nature, Man and God, p. 482. 38  Temple, Nature, Man and God, p. 482. 39  Temple, Nature, Man and God, p. 484. 40  Temple, Nature, Man and God, p. 519. 41  Temple, Nature, Man and God, p. 519. 42  Temple, Nature, Man and God, p. 513.

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necessary but insufficient for human well-being. Temple could not have been more traditional or more orthodox. 2

Postwar Receptions

Quick and Temple both died in 1944. Although the volumes discussed above remained in print, it does not appear that anyone in the early postwar period was inclined to pick up, much less further develop, their novel sacramental theology and its understanding of creation. This can be seen in the scholarship published on Quick and Temple at the time. Quick was soon forgotten; although mentioned occasionally in passing, his theology did not become the subject of a single monograph until 2015.43 At the time, the only major exception was an appreciative article by J. K. Mozley.44 Mozley described The Christian Sacraments as ‘the most important contribution to sacramental theology which has come from the Church of England during the present century’, but he did not focus on its broad conception of sacramentality.45 He instead praised Quick for rooting the sacraments in Christ, for treating them as both instruments and signs, and for writing the work with an eye to Christian unity.46 Looking over Quick’s theology as a whole, Mozley concluded that ‘as an expounder of Christian orthodoxy he was second to none.’47 And then, even as The Christian Sacraments remained in print for the next eighteen years, Quick largely faded from view. Temple’s posthumous fame was quite different. Numerous biographies, monographs, and journal articles have mined both the depth and the influence of his life, witness, and thought. The Manchester Guardian’s obituary of 27 October 1944 is illuminating; it emphasized Temple’s twin devotion to social reform and the Church.48 When the American periodical The Christian Century ran an obituary for Temple in its 8 November 1944 issue, it praised the late Archbishop for maintaining clear Christian commitments in pursuit of humanitarian ends, and for his unswerving commitment to the

43  Hughes, Oliver Quick and the Quest for a Christian Metaphysic. See also n. 5 above, where Quick is one of the four ‘philosophical Anglicans’ studied in Sell’s volume. 44  J. K. Mozley, ‘Oliver Quick as Theologian’, Theology 48 (1945), pp. 6–11, 30–6. 45  Mozley, ‘Oliver Quick as Theologian’, p. 7. 46  Mozley, ‘Oliver Quick as Theologian’, pp. 32–5. 47  Mozley, ‘Oliver Quick as Theologian’, p. 36. 48  ‘The silence of a wise and noble Anglican voice’. Available online: http://www.theguard ian.com/news/1944/oct/27/mainsection.fromthearchive (accessed 6 September 2015).

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ecumenical movement.49 One week later, The Christian Century ran another article on Temple, which carried the subheading ‘Religious Leaders Stress Great Loss to the Ecumenical Movement’.50 And then again, at the end of the month, two correspondents from England wrote that all British Christians felt the loss of Temple acutely.51 H. D. A. Major’s obituary in The Modern Churchman maintained the same emphases while adding but one note – that of criticism: ‘[Temple] could tolerate and even sympathize with liberal and modern views; but as a strong traditionalist he was himself unable to affirm them.’52 Finally, in his classic survey From Gore to Temple, Archbishop Michael Ramsey emphasized Temple’s theology of revelation, his social thought, and, like everyone else, his ecumenical commitments.53 Contemporaries paid no special attention to ‘the sacramental universe’. Two postwar Anglican discussions of the sacramental universe are notable because their authors, James Pike and Joseph Fletcher, later left Christianity. Pike was elected bishop of California in the Episcopal Church in 1958. Like Fletcher, with whom he corresponded about moral theology in the mid-late 1960s, Pike courted notoriety and sharp debate.54 An alcoholic stalked by rumours and reports of his own marital unfaithfulness, he married three times, rejected significant portions of the Nicene Creed, dabbled in the occult, and left the Episcopal Church shortly before his death in the Judean wilderness in 1969.55 Fletcher left the Episcopal Church at about the same time. In 1966, he published the controversial volume Situation Ethics in which he rejected the possibility of absolute morality.56 The following year, he stopped participating in chapel services at Episcopal Divinity School, where he taught. He later

49   The Christian Century 61 (8 November 1944), pp. 1280–1. 50   The Christian Century 61 (15 November 1944), pp. 1332–3. 51   The Christian Century 61 (29 November 1944), p. 1390. 52  H. D. A. Major, ‘In Memoriam – William Temple’, The Modern Churchman 34:7–9 (Oct.– Dec. 1944). pp. 203–4 (quote on p. 204). 53  Arthur Michael Ramsey, From Gore to Temple: The Development of Anglican Theology between Lux Mundi and the Second World War 1889–1939 (London: Longmans, 1960), ch. 10 (pp. 146–61). 54  James A. Pike, You & The New Morality: 74 Cases (New York: Harper & Row, 1967), p. vi. 55  David M. Robertson, A Passionate Pilgrim: A Biography of Bishop James A. Pike (New York: Vintage Books, 2004), pp. 89–90. 56  Joseph Fletcher, Situation Ethics: The New Morality (Philadelphia, PA: Westminster John Knox Press, second edition, 1997). The first edition of Situation Ethics was published in 1966.

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became an atheist, and spent the remainder of his academic career as a medical ethicist who advocated both eugenics and euthanasia.57 As is fitting for a concept that was originally developed incidental to other issues, neither Pike nor Fletcher gave the sacramental universe a central position in their writings. Pike briefly mentioned the sacramental universe in his popular 1953 volume Beyond Anxiety. In a chapter entitled ‘Inhibition’, Pike addressed ‘the widespread feeling that that the joys of the flesh are sinful, or less worthy than more “spiritual” activity’.58 Amidst a thoroughly orthodox explanation of the biblical image of ‘the flesh’, Pike affirmed that the needs of the body are not unspiritual but are actually part of creation: ‘the creative order is continually related to God as a sign of His presence, as the means through which His ends are effectuated through the free co-operation of men. This is a sacramental universe.’ He concluded, ‘Genuine fulfillment under God is the proper sacramental relationship of spirit to flesh, the use of flesh in such a way as properly to express spirit and be a means thereto.’59 Pike’s pastoral use of the sacramental universe was an unusual application of Temple’s theology, both in the 1950s and after. Although he did not cite Temple by name in Beyond Anxiety – the work contains no reference matter of any sort – Pike was deeply impressed by Nature, Man and God, which he first read in the early 1940s.60 However much the bishop of California later diverged from Temple, the archbishop was an intellectual presence in Pike’s writings. This would remain true in 1964, when Pike drew upon Temple in a very different way under the influence of John A. T. Robinson’s Honest to God. Another concise discussion of the sacramental universe appeared in Fletcher’s substantive 1963 study William Temple: Twentieth-Century Christian. Fletcher correctly explained that Temple’s sacramental theology was a product of ‘the sacramental principle’, which united spirit with matter.61 However, Fletcher also applied sacramental language in ways that Temple did not, and affirmed that ‘The Sacrament [the Eucharist] is also a ritual 57  Fletcher’s autobiography appears in Kenneth Vaux (ed.), Joseph Fletcher: Memoir of an Ex-Radical, Reminiscence and Reappraisal (Philadelphia, PA: Westminster/John Knox Press, 1993), pp. 55–92. 58  James A. Pike, Beyond Anxiety (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1953), p. 44. Robertson (in A Passionate Pilgrim, p. 82) describes Beyond Anxiety as ‘widely read’. 59  Pike, Beyond Anxiety, p. 49. 60  Robertson, A Passionate Pilgrim, pp. 37–8. 61  Joseph Fletcher, William Temple: Twentieth-Century Christian (New York: The Seabury Press, 1963), p. 92. The term ‘sacramental principle’ goes back at least as far as Charles Gore, The Body of Christ: An Enquiry into the Institution and Doctrine of Holy Communion (London: John Murray, 1904), pp. 36–47.

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expression of the continuous process of creation.’62 On this view, God’s presence was so immanent in the created order that, in Fletcher’s words, ‘Creation is sacramentalism.’63 Fletcher recognized that for Temple (and, we might add, for Quick), the Incarnation was ‘the supreme sacrament’,64 but Fletcher did little to distinguish this distinctly Christian claim from a more general belief in ‘the sacramentality of all material things’ – a view that he also attributed to Temple.65 In Fletcher’s study, the sacramental universe was a universe in which everything was sacramental, rather than a world in which natural theology longed for incarnate revelation. Some later authors advanced a theology similar to Fletcher’s and used Temple to justify the imposition of an extreme sacramentalism upon a wide variety of created goods – although subsequent developments should not be used to portray Fletcher’s 1963 study as anything other than a serious and thorough, if sometimes misguided, engagement with Temple’s theology and legacy. Nonetheless, Fletcher’s discussion of ‘the sacramental universe’ lacked the Christocentric metaphysic that defined Christus Veritas and haunted Nature, Man and God. 3

The Crises of the 1960s

Like other popular works of early-twentieth century Anglican theology, Temple’s and Quick’s three volumes disappeared from the presses during the ‘religious crisis’ of the ‘long’ 1960s.66 It is perhaps noteworthy that The Christian Sacraments and Nature, Man and God were last published in 1964; Honest to God, written by John A. T. Robinson, the bishop of Woolwich, was published 62  Fletcher, William Temple, p. 93; emphasis in original. 63  Fletcher, William Temple, p. 93. 64  Fletcher, William Temple, p. 93. 65  Fletcher, William Temple, p. 95; emphasis added. 66  On the 1960s as a religious crisis, see Hugh McLeod, The Religious Crisis of the 1960s (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007), esp. ch. 1 (pp. 6–30); cf. Callum G. Brown, ‘What was the Religious Crisis of the 1960s?’, Journal of Religious History 34:4 (2010), pp. 468–79. Perhaps there was also a ‘crisis’ in Anglican publishing at this time, as similar print histories exist for other popular early-twentieth century works. A. G. Hebert’s influential Liturgy and Society: The Function of the Church in the Modern World (London: Faber and Faber, 1935) saw twelve impressions by the time that it last appeared in 1964; Kenneth E. Kirk’s popular volume Some Principles of Moral Theology and Their Application (London: Longmans, 1920) saw thirteen impressions through 1965, after which it too was not reprinted. Arthur Marwick (in The Sixties, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998, pp. 6–8) argues that the 1960s was a ‘long’ decade, best dated from 1958 to 1974; McLeod (among others) accepts Marwick’s periodization.

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the previous year. Whether intentionally or not, Robinson’s little volume did much to determine the shape of Anglican theological debate for decades after its publication.67 Although Robinson never intended his book for a wide audience, Honest to God was immensely popular.68 It sold out on the day of its publication.69 By late 1963, more than 350,000 copies had been printed and plans were made to translate it into other European languages as well as into Japanese.70 Honest to God saw its twenty-second impression in 1991,71 2002 saw the publication of a fortieth anniversary edition, and 2013 a fiftieth. By 1993, it had sold a million copies.72 Such widespread appeal may have been due to the fact that many were, by their own admission, unclear on what the bishop thought about God or a wide variety of other matters. Readers of all persuasions could impose their own ideas upon Robinson’s frequent citations of Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s vague phrase ‘religionless Christianity’,73 and readers could just as freely interpret the bishop’s discussion of ‘the new morality’ – a discussion partially influenced by Joseph Fletcher’s early considerations of situation ethics.74 In Honest to God, Robinson denounced ‘supranaturalism’ and ‘theism as ordinarily understood’,75 and called for redescribing God with descriptive metaphors that favored images of depth rather than transcendence.76 It was nothing if not sensational, although some readers were unimpressed. At the time, the Anglican Thomist Eric Mascall described Robinson’s argument as ‘a mere caricature of anything that any intelligent Christian has ever taken .

67  Martin E. Marty, Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s Letters and Papers from Prison: A Biography (Princeton, NJ and Oxford: Princeton University Press, 2011), p. 114, cites John De Gruchy, who considers the radical theology of the 1960s to have been a ‘passing fad’. As the following discussion shows, quite the opposite was true among Anglicans. 68  John A. T. Robinson, Exploration into God (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1967), p. vi. 69  Eric James, ‘The Flowering of Honesty’, in John Bowden (ed.), Thirty Years of Honesty: Honest to God Then and Now (London: SCM Press, 1993), pp. 53–63, here p. 57. 70  David L. Edwards, ‘Preface’, in David L. Edwards (ed.), The Honest to God Debate (London: SCM Press, 1963), pp. 7–12, here p. 7. 71  John Bowden, ‘Editor’s Preface’, in Bowden, Thirty Years of Honesty, pp. vii–viii, here p. vii. 72  David L. Edwards, ‘Introduction’, in Bowden, Thirty Years of Honesty, pp. 1–7, here p. 1. 73  John A. T. Robinson, Honest to God, fortieth anniversary edition (Philadelphia, PA: Westminster John Knox Press, 2002), pp. 36–9, 61, 99–104, 122–7, 133–41. Insightful comments on the British reception of Bonhoeffer may be found in Marty, Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s Letters and Papers from Prison: A Biography, ch. 5 (pp. 103–32); for the background of British secular theology more generally, see D. Densil Morgan, Barth Reception in Britain (London and New York: T&T Clark, 2010), pp. 235–42. 74  Robinson, Honest to God, pp. 116–21. 75  Robinson, Honest to God, pp. 29–32 (on ‘supranaturalism’), p. 39 (‘theism as ordinarily understood’). 76  Robinson, Honest to God, pp. 45–50.

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literally’.77 Rather more bluntly, the Scottish philosopher Alasdair MacIntyre described the bishop as ‘an atheist’.78 In its iconoclasm, Honest to God offered its audience much to reject but little to affirm.79 In the Preface of his derivatively entitled volume A Time for Christian Candor (1964), Pike described Honest to God as having instigated a ‘theological revolution’.80 The bishops of Woolwich and California became acquainted in the mid-1960s; Robinson sent Pike an advance copy of Honest to God,81 and when Robinson visited California in 1965, Pike took him to Esalen, the occulttinged counter-cultural institute that began the human potential movement.82 When Robinson released a collection of previously published writings in 1970, he dedicated it to the recently deceased Pike.83 The sacramental universe reappeared in A Time for Christian Candor, but in keeping with the general tendency of Honest to God, received inconsiderate treatment. Apparently uninterested in maintaining his earlier pastoral approach, the bishop of California remained wholly novel in his use of Temple. In the second appendix of the volume, entitled ‘On Certain Relativities in Cult and Polity’, Pike used the sacramental universe to argue that because of ‘historical information’, a wide variety of liturgical practices ‘cannot be called essential’.84 This included the precise number of sacraments, which Pike complained was among the Church’s ‘unfounded rigidities’.85 Pike praised Temple, whose theology had enabled some Christians, particularly Anglicans, to overcome such dissensions. ‘The scars have been somewhat healed … through the growing conviction (strengthened by the writings of the late Archbishop William Temple) that we are in a “sacramental universe,” in which all kinds of relationships are sacramental.’86 Pike did not elaborate upon the point, but as in Fletcher’s 1963 study, the sacramental universe was used here to affirm a vague and possibly boundless sacramentalism. 77  Review by E. L. Mascall, in Edwards, The Honest to God Debate, pp. 92–5, here p. 93. 78  Alasdair MacIntyre, ‘God and the Theologians’, in Edwards, The Honest to God Debate, pp. 215–28, here p. 215. 79  In this, I disagree with Michael Brierley (in ‘Panentheism: The Abiding Significance of Honest to God’, Modern Believing 54:2 (2013), pp. 112–24) where he conflates Honest to God with its sequel. 80  James A. Pike, A Time for Christian Candor (New York: Harper & Row, 1964), p. 7. 81  Pike, A Time for Christian Candor, p. 8. 82  Jeffrey J. Kripal, Esalen: America and the Religion of No Religion (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 2007), pp. 182–6. 83  John A. T. Robinson, Christian Freedom in a Permissive Society (Philadelphia, PA: The Westminster Press, 1970). 84  Pike, A Time for Christian Candor, p. 147; emphasis in original. 85  Pike, A Time for Christian Candor, p. 147. 86  Pike, A Time for Christian Candor, p. 148.

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A Time for Christian Candor did not see a second edition. Of greater longterm influence was Robinson’s 1967 volume Exploration into God, which was based on lectures given in the United States at Stanford University in May 1966. The title was not Robinson’s own but came from Pike, who led a course of the same name at Esalen in January and February earlier that year.87 If Honest to God indicated one particular theological trajectory, Exploration into God indicated another. Robinson did not seek to duplicate Pike’s own theology, and by the early 1970s Robinson had begun to explicitly reject comparisons of his work with Pike’s.88 Robinson denoted his new direction ‘theography’,89 explaining that ‘The task of theology may be seen as a form of map making – trying to represent the mystery of theos (the incommunicable spiritual reality) by a logos or word-picture which can be used for the purposes of communication.’90 As in Honest to God, Robinson remained preoccupied with the spatial metaphors that human beings use to describe ultimate reality. The image of exploration was intended to imply movement from the periphery towards God as the interior, central reality that defines human existence.91 By moving away from traditional images of transcendence and hierarchy, Robinson had to articulate a doctrine of God that was concerned not with reality ‘up there’, but ‘out there’. He did so by advocating panentheism. Robinson’s panentheism should be distinguished from later forms of panentheistic theology. Quoting The Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church, he defined panentheism as ‘the belief that the Being of God includes and penetrates the whole universe, so that every part of it exists in him, but (as against pantheism) that his Being is more than, and is not exhausted by, the Universe’.92 Generally speaking, all forms of panentheism are interested in the relationship between God and creation, but whereas traditional theism emphasizes that God and creation are fundamentally different, panentheistic theologies are quite fluid in this regard, and are sometimes indistinguishable from pantheism, identifying God and nature so closely that they become indistinct from one another. Robinson, however, stressed the dissimilarity between pantheism and panentheism, leaving Creator and created distinct.93 Perhaps reflecting his own evangelical upbringing, Robinson specified that his was a ‘personal 87  Kripal, Esalen, pp. 185, 491 n. 8. 88  Robertson, A Passionate Pilgrim, pp. 124–5. 89  Robinson, Exploration into God, p. 75. 90  Robinson, Exploration into God, p. 26. 91  Robinson, Exploration into God, ch. 4 (pp. 74–96) is entitled ‘An Exercise in Re-centering’. 92  Robinson, Exploration into God, pp. 86–7. 93   Opposition to pantheism occurs throughout the discussion of panentheism; see Robinson, Exploration into God, e.g., pp. 105, 118, 141, 161.

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panentheism’,94 cautioning that if panentheism cannot ‘relate God to what is most real and central, then the exercise is purely academic’.95 Here, Robinson was at his most Biblical and pastoral. He emphasized that the universe was not ‘a purely immanent self-developing process’,96 but that through Christ, God called both nature and the individual believer into being.97 In the last paragraph of Exploration into God, commenting on I Cor. 15, Robinson proposed that the New Testament advocated ‘an eschatological panentheism’.98 Creation awaited redemption. Regardless of the spatial metaphors used, this conviction placed Robinson in the immediate company of Quick and Temple, rather than that of Fletcher and Pike. 4

Environmental Turns

With the rise of modern environmentalism in the early 1970s, individuals and groups as diverse as Greenpeace, the revivalist preacher Billy Graham, and mainline Protestants all began expressing ecological concerns.99 Anglicans first addressed environmental matters in 1971 when Archbishop of Canterbury Michael Ramsey created a working group ‘To investigate the relevance of Christian doctrine to the problems of man in his environment’.100 Together with members of the Doctrine Commission of the Church of England, the working group began meeting in October 1972 and presented its final report, Man and Nature, to Archbishop Ramsey in 1974. Man and Nature commenced with a long historical view of the twentieth century, opening with the blunt recognition that ‘Twentieth-century civilization is proving remarkably turbulent and crisis-ridden.’101 Briefly sketching the technological developments of the First World War, the advent of ‘the atomic era’ in 1945, and subsequent fears of over-population, pollution and the depletion of resources, the authors concluded, ‘The twentieth century has seen the most rapid technical development 94  Robinson, Exploration into God, p. 89. 95  Robinson, Exploration into God, p. 91; emphasis in original. 96  Robinson, Exploration into God, p. 106. 97  Robinson, Exploration into God, p. 108. 98  Robinson, Exploration into God, p. 160. 99  See Frank Zelko, Make it a Green Peace! The Rise of Countercultural Environmentalism (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013), pp. 112 and 333 n. 7; Larry Eskridge, God’s Forever Family: The Jesus People Movement in America (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013), pp. 141 (mainline Protestants) and 174 (Billy Graham). 100  Hugh Montefiore (ed.), Man and Nature (London: Collins, 1975), p. ix. 101  Hugh Montefiore (ed.), Man and Nature, p. 3.

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in human history.’102 Man and Nature did not portray recent developments as a break with prior trends but as an outgrowth of individualism and secularism, which culminated in ‘the desacralization of the world’.103 Neither Temple nor Quick had been concerned to craft an ethical justification for environmental protection; Man and Nature is important because it bequeathed to Anglicans a vocabulary and rationale for ecological commitment: ‘the sacramental universe’ underwent an environmental turn. Man and Nature responded to two lines of critique. Influenced by Eastern Orthodox analyses of Western Christianity, the report noted that individualism was a tendency in both Protestantism and Catholicism. Anglicanism was portrayed as standing closer to Eastern Orthodoxy, which had long maintained a cosmological rather than anthropocentric vision of salvation.104 The authors believed that a more holistic understanding of redemption – one that included nature as well as humanity – would move Western Christians to care for creation. Anglican and Roman Catholic figures, ranging from the seventeenthcentury Caroline divines to the twentieth-century Jesuit paleontologist and geologist Teilhard de Chardin, were identified as offering important affirmations of the spiritual value of nature; but the authors assumed that Western forms of Christianity had lost something that the Eastern churches had retained in a more pristine and even unblemished form. The report also responded to the work of Lynn White, an American historian of science and technology. In his 1967 article ‘The Historical Roots of Our Ecologic Crisis’, White argued that the medieval Church had laid the intellectual groundwork for the environmental crises of the late-twentieth century.105 He proposed that under the influence of the book of Genesis, which portrayed humanity as having dominion over creation, Christianity had defined the value of nature solely in reference to human wants and needs. ‘Especially in its Western form, Christianity is the most anthropocentric religion the world has seen.’106 Man and Nature’s use of Eastern Orthodox sources responded to White’s understanding of the differences between Western and Eastern Christian cultures. The latter, White claimed, made no noticeable technological advancements after the seventh century, and because of this it created a Christian culture quite unlike that in the West: ‘The Greek saint contemplates; 102  Hugh Montefiore (ed.), Man and Nature, p. 4. 103  Hugh Montefiore (ed.), Man and Nature, pp. 38–40; the section that begins on p. 45 is entitled ‘The Desacralization of the World’. 104  Hugh Montefiore (ed.), Man and Nature, pp. 41–3. 105  Lynn White, Jr., ‘The Historical Roots of our Ecologic Crisis’, Science, New Series, 155, no. 3767 (10 March 1967), pp. 1203–7. 106  Lynn White, Jr., ‘The Historical Roots of our Ecologic Crisis’, p. 1205.

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the Western saint acts.’ Within the purportedly non-contemplative framework of Western Christendom, exploration and exploitation were inseparable. In its published form, Man and Nature was followed by a series of essays written by several of the committee members. Arthur Peacocke, an Anglican priest and biochemist, composed two of these. One was a short but pointed rebuttal of White’s thesis. Peacocke drew attention to biblical and later Christian emphases on humanity as the steward of creation, and also highlighted the fact that non-Christian societies were historically no less destructive of the natural environment.107 His other essay, ‘A Sacramental View of Nature’, sketched out a Christian understanding of creation. The writings of Temple and Quick made a sudden reappearance as Peacocke drew theology and biology together in the service of ecological care. Temple’s presence was partially due to personal reasons; while an undergraduate in the 1940s, Peacocke had become an agnostic, but a sermon by Temple helped return him to Christianity.108 Peacocke saw the sacramental worldview as denying any duality between material and spiritual creation, and he approvingly cited Temple’s description of Christianity as ‘the most materialistic of all great religions’.109 Inspired by Quick, Peacocke defined matter in sacramental terms as both symbolic and instrumental, and the incarnation as ‘the supreme sacrament’.110 Peacocke supplemented these older perspectives with an evolutionary understanding of nature as an ascendant process, but instead of identifying more complex forms of material existence as the culmination of evolution, Peacocke instead focused on humanity’s own spiritual strivings: ‘by taking the scientific perspective we cannot avoid arriving at a view of matter which sees it as manifesting mental, personal and spiritual activities.’111 However, unlike Darwinian understandings of evolution, which emphasized competition for scarce resources, Peacocke’s sacramental outlook emphasized that ‘At every level, this order reflects in its own measure something of the quality of deity.’112 Like Temple and Quick, Peacocke believed that nature was insufficiently revelatory, and in his penultimate paragraph, he further defined the ‘sacramental view of nature’ as uniting God’s hiddenness in 107  A. R. Peacocke, ‘On “The Historical Roots of Our Ecologic Crisis”’, in Man and Nature, pp. 155–8. 108  John Polkinghorne, ‘Peacocke, Arthur Robert (1924–2006)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, Jan 2010 at: http://www.oxforddnb.com.www2.lib .ku.edu/view/article/97465 (accessed 10 Oct 2015). 109  A. R. Peacocke, ‘A Sacramental View of Nature’, p. 132; see also p. 203, nn. 8–9, where Peacocke distinguishes his scientifically-influenced view from Temple’s Hegelian idealism. 110  Peacocke, ‘A Sacramental View of Nature’, pp. 133, 134. 111  Peacocke, ‘A Sacramental View of Nature’, p. 139. 112  Peacocke, ‘A Sacramental View of Nature’, p. 140.

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creation to God’s revelation in Christ.113 By working older themes around ecological concern, Peacocke gave the sacramental universe the ethical impetus that it now carries. Peacocke continued to develop this approach in later writings. His 1978 Bampton Lectures, published as Creation and the World of Science, were an extended analysis of the relationship between Christianity and creation. Many of the concerns that animated Man and Nature were more fully developed here. ‘A Sacramental View of Nature’ had largely followed Temple and Quick, but their emphasis upon eschatology was absent. Peacocke defined the sacramentality of nature in reference to the incarnation alone: ‘The significance of the incarnation of God in a man within the created world is that in the incarnate Christ the sacramental character of that world was made explicit and perfected.’114 This difference was further elaborated in Creation and the World of Science. Drawing again on Temple and Quick, Peacocke proposed that ‘if, in the Christian understanding, the world of matter has both the symbolic function of expressing the mind and the instrumental function of being the means whereby he effects his purposes, then we can say, broadly, that the world is a sacrament, or, at least, sacramental.’115 The semantic slippage here between ‘sacrament’ and ‘sacramental’ is important; Peacocke largely dissolved the distinction between them. His words are also notable because they deviate slightly from a comment that he made in ‘A Sacramental View of Nature’ where he wrote that ‘meaning can be attached to speaking of the created world as a sacrament or, at least, as sacramental.’116 By 1978 the line between discursive practice and descriptive fact had become blurred. The reason for this shift may be found in Peacocke’s eclectic ecumenism. In addition to a variety of Orthodox theologians, some of whom were also cited in Man and Nature, Peacocke drew upon Lutheran thought in Creation and the World of Science. In particular, he appealed to the doctrine of consubstantiation, which holds that Christ is present ‘in, with, and under’ the bread and wine of the Eucharist. Consubstantiation, which has historically been held only by Lutherans, returns us to twelfth-century scholasticism and its sixteenthcentury recapitulation. Between Peter Lombard’s Sentences and the Fourth Lateran Council (1215), a distinct understanding of the Eucharist developed, termed transubstantiation, which claims that once the bread and the wine are 113  Peacocke, ‘A Sacramental View of Nature’, pp. 141–2. 114  Peacocke, ‘A Sacramental View of Nature’, p. 134. 115  A. R. Peacocke, Creation and the World of Science (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1979), pp. 289–90. 116  Peacocke, ‘A Sacramental View of Nature’, p. 134; emphasis added.

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consecrated, their physical features (also known as accidents) remain but their material substances change into the body and blood of Christ. Thus Jesus was said to be ‘in and under’ the forms of bread and wine. Amid the theological debates and ecclesiological divisions of the sixteenth century, the Church of England rejected transubstantiation. In this, it was like the Lutheran churches, but whereas Lutherans adopted consubstantiation as doctrinal orthodoxy, Anglicans did not, and instead adopted an agnostic approach to such scholastic concerns. Within the wider history of Anglicanism, Peacocke’s appeal to consubstantiation was a highly unusual move, and his further application of consubstantiation to creation was even more unusual. Although he devoted the last chapter of Creation and the World of Science to contemporary theories of eschatology, he did not connect these back to the sacramental universe. He simply maintained his earlier conviction that the incarnation gave creation its ultimate meaning. At the invitation of the Canadian climatologist F. Kenneth Hare, Peacocke participated in a 1981 conference at Trinity College, University of Toronto, that marked the centenary of William Temple’s birth. At this conference, and for the first time it would seem, the sacramental universe moved into the central position for understanding Temple’s life and work. In the introduction to the published proceedings, Hare wrote that ‘the most striking phrase in all Temple’s work is the sacramental universe.’117 Hare read Temple through the lens of Peacocke’s theology; as he continued his introduction, Hare described Temple as having ‘foreshadowed’ Peacocke’s argument against Lynn White that Christianity is not to blame for environmental degradation.118 Elsewhere in the conference proceedings, environmental concerns reverberated with echoes of the debate between religion and science. For the Canadian Anglican philosopher D. R. G. Owen, Temple’s theology of the sacramental universe was ‘both a solution of the spirit-matter problem and a resolution of the debate between science and religion.’119 Owen explained the relationship between material and spiritual truth with the classic scholastic definition of a sacrament as ‘an outward and visible sign of an inward and spiritual reality’.120 He proposed that Temple’s theology would engender epistemic humility among 117  F. Kenneth Hare, Introduction to F. Kenneth Hare (ed.), The Experiment of Life: Science and Religion (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1983), pp. vii–xvii, here xiii. 118  Hare (ed.), The Experiment of Life, xiv; White’s essay was discussed in Robert W. Kates, ‘Part and Apart: Issues in Humankind’s Relationship to the Natural World’, in Hare (ed.), The Experiment of Life, pp. 151–80. 119  D. R. G. Owen, ‘The Sacramental View of Reality: The Spirit-Matter Problem’, in Hare (ed.), The Experiment of Life, pp. 17–26, here p. 18. 120  Owen, ‘The Sacramental View of Reality’, p. 19.

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scientists, helping them to recognize that because their investigations pertain to the material facets of this relation, scientific explanations cannot address spiritual matters. In closing, Owen wrote, ‘The world is the self-expression of God – the outward and visible sign of the inward and spiritual reality.’121 Whether intentionally or not, the aesthetic sacramentalism deplored by Quick had re-emerged. Owen’s approach was not uniform across contributors. John Macquarrie observed that, for Temple, ‘the knowledge of God to be gained from our natural knowledge of the world demands completion in an act of incarnation.’122 But it was also evident that Temple’s conception of the sacramental universe, now revived as an apologetic defence of Christianity’s place in the ecological crisis, was being discussed in ways far removed from Temple’s own emphases. Macquarrie proposed that one could attempt to craft a panentheistic reading of Temple, but also argued that for Temple, such an approach undermined divine transcendence.123 Peacocke’s own contribution largely reiterated his argument in Creation and the World of Science. The Incarnation again took its central place as Peacocke described the spiritual redemption wrought by Christ as ‘“in, with, and under” the physical stuff of existence’.124 Eschatology remained absent. Having returned to theological discourse in the previous decade under the impetus of modern environmentalism, by the early 1980s a range of uses had emerged for the sacramental universe, some closer than others to the thought of Temple and Quick. 5 Conclusion Subsequent Anglican discussions of the sacramental universe often dovetailed with discussions and debates about panentheism. It would take a substantial article to do justice to the full scope of writing from this point on, but the major outlines can be sketched in closing. In a series of books published from the early 1980s onward, Sallie McFague developed a distinct form of panentheistic theology that identified the world as God’s body. She began her 1982 volume Metaphorical Theology by rejecting the idea that we live in a sacramental 121  Owen, ‘The Sacramental View of Reality’, p. 25. 122   John Macquarrie, ‘William Temple: Philosopher, Theologian, Churchman’, in Hare (ed.), The Experiment of Life, pp. 3–16, here p. 12; this essay was later reprinted in John Macquarrie, Stubborn Theological Questions (London: SCM Press, 2003), pp. 26–39. 123  Macquarrie, ‘William Temple’, pp. 9–10. 124  A. R. Peacocke, ‘The New Biology and Nature, Man and God’, in Hare (ed.), The Experiment of Life, pp. 27–88, here p. 76.

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universe. Taking the advent of a distinctly secular age as axiomatic, McFague initially insisted that ‘we cannot return to the time of the sacramental universe.’125 But as she turned to consider environmental issues in subsequent studies, she increasingly relied upon sacramental language and imagery. Five years later in Models of God, McFague drew feminist theology together with Lynn White’s thesis to argue that changing Christian language about God would change Christian behavior. ‘If the world is imagined as self-expressive of God, if it is a “sacrament” – the outward and visible presence or body – of God, if it is not an alien other over against God but expressive of God’s very being, then, how would God respond to it and how should we?’ Rewriting Christians’ descriptive vocabulary, including those images and metaphors most deeply rooted in the written sources of Christian faith, would reorient Christian ethics and lead the Church to embrace ‘creation, nurture, passionate concern, attraction, respect, support, cooperation, mutuality’.126 Left to the fate imposed by more traditional categories, Christians would rely upon a ‘monarchical’ model that divorced ethics from power.127 Her conception of monarchy was as ahistorical as it was American, but by treating it as normative, McFague laid a conceptual foundation for a pantheistically-tinged panentheism. In her later volume The Body of God, she surmised, ‘The model of the universe as God’s body unites immanence and transcendence.’ In it, ‘everything becomes potentially a sacrament of God.’128 Descriptive proposals became prescriptive demand as McFague collapsed the distance between her models and the reality that they were intended to signify, resulting in a sacramental vision not unlike that advanced by Fletcher and Pike in the 1960s. McFague’s proposal was but one tendency in North Atlantic Anglicanism, and its influence grew primarily within the Episcopal Church (USA). Other Anglicans became increasingly hostile to this tendency. At a conference in 1995, Rowan Williams charged against the fusion of sacramentality with the natural order by describing sacraments as ‘rites of dislocation’.129 Baptism in particular removed the Christian from the wider order of the social and 125  Sallie McFague, Metaphorical Theology: Models of God in Religious Language (Philadelphia, PA: Fortress Press, 1982), p. 2. 126  Sallie McFague, Models of God: Theology for an Ecological, Nuclear Age (Philadelphia, PA: Fortress Press, 1987), pp. 61–2. 127  McFague, Models of God, pp. 63–9. 128  Sallie McFague, The Body of God: An Ecological Theology (Philadelphia, PA: Fortress Press, 1993), p. 20. 129  Rowan Williams, ‘Sacraments of the New Society’, in David Brown and Ann Loades (eds), Christ: The Sacramental Word (London: SPCK, 1996), pp. 89–102, here p. 89. This essay was later reprinted in Rowan Williams, On Christian Theology (Oxford: Blackwell Publishing, 2000), pp. 209–21.

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natural world, and set the Christian within the context of a new community: the Church. Williams concluded: There is, then, in sacramental practice, something that does indeed reflect on how we see matter in general; but it is not, I think, a ‘sacramental principle’ enabling us to recognize divine presence in all things. It is more that the divine presence is apprehended by seeing in all things their difference, their particularity, their ‘not-God-ness’, since we have learned what the divine action is in the renunciation of Christ, his giving himself into inanimate form.130 Later, as Archbishop of Canterbury, Williams more bluntly asserted, ‘Sacramentality is not a general principle that the world is full of “sacredness”: it is the very specific conviction that the world is full of the life of a God whose nature is known in Christ and the Spirit.’131 Other attempts at crafting a satisfactory theology of nature, such as that by the priest-physicist John Polkinghorne, also critiqued panentheism. He saw panentheism as a vague concept and, like Macquarrie, argued that in blurring the distinction between Creator and created, it sacrificed transcendence.132 Like Peacocke, Polkinghorne also drew upon a range of ecumenical sources, including Eastern Orthodox theology, but he made no attempt at describing creation with the language of consubstantiation. His theology was more traditionally Anglican. The influence of these debates upon the wider Anglican Communion is unclear. In the short term, Resolution 1.8 of the 1998 Lambeth Conference led to the formation of the Anglican Communion Environmental Network (ACEN) in 2002. The first Global Anglican Congress on the Stewardship of Creation met that August in South Africa. Delegates came from all over the Anglican Communion – Uganda and the United States, New Zealand and England, Bangladesh and Brazil, to name but a few. Given such diverse attendees, it was clear that many Anglicans perceived environmental care as a fundamental facet of Christian faith and life. Speakers did not discuss panentheism or the precise difference between describing creation as a sacrament or as sacramental. The Rev. Canon Jeff Golliher, a member of the Anglican Observer’s Office at the 130  Williams, On Christian Theology, p. 98; emphasis in original. 131  Rowan Williams, Introduction to Geoffrey Rowell and Christine Hall (eds), The Gestures of God: Explorations in Sacramentality (London and New York: Continuum, 2003), pp. xiii– xiv, here p. xiii. 132  See, e.g., John Polkinghorne, Science and the Trinity: The Christian Encounter with Reality (New Haven, CT and London: Yale University Press, 2004), pp. 93–9.

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United Nations, stated that the Congress ‘had no desire to promote a particular creation theology or to stage a general debate about it in which there would be the appearance of winners and losers’. Rather, ‘Everyone already agreed that the stewardship of creation is integral to faith.’133 The Congress’s proceedings indicated that practical concerns were central for most Anglicans, and contributors covered topics as diverse as community empowerment, climate change, and biodiversity. Furthermore, attendees drew on the Bible more than on any other resource. Even as conference participants wrestled with modern problems, they oftentimes articulated their actions with the ancient cadences and images of Scripture. These tendencies have continued to define ACEN since 2012, when it became an official network of the Anglican Communion and the official forum for Anglican ecological advocacy. ACEN’s 2015 report Crisis and Commitment combined practical issues, particularly in the developing world, with sermons and Bible studies. The sacramentality of creation will likely remain part of Anglican theology for some time, but it remains to be seen whether the sacramental language of the 1998 Lambeth Conference’s Resolution 1.8 can effect what it signifies. Perhaps this, too, is ultimately eschatological.

133  Jeff Golliher, ‘The Purpose of the Anglican Congress: The Stewardship of Creation and Sustainable Development’, in Taimalelagi Fagamalama Tuatagaloa-Matalavea and Jeff Golliher (eds), Healing God’s Creation: The Global Anglican Congress on the Stewardship of Creation (Harrisburg, PA: Morehouse, 2004), pp. 21–5.

Part 2 Locally Adapted to the Varying Needs of the Nations: Church Union and the Anglican Episcopate, 1900–1950

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Chapter 5

The 1913 Kikuyu Conference, Anglo-Catholics and the Church of England Mark D. Chapman In the wake of the World Missionary Conference held in Edinburgh in 1910, it became increasingly obvious that Christianity had become a global phenomenon, whose discourse and problems could no longer be restricted principally to the European and American context. This was particularly true of the Church of England: as Europe collapsed into what soon became a world war in the late summer of 1914, many in the Church of England were absorbed in reflecting on the domestic fallout of the Kikuyu Missionary Conference which had been held in British East Africa in June 1913.1 Indeed, in the week before Britain’s entry into the war on 4 August 1914, the Archbishop of Canterbury, Randall T. Davidson was meeting at Lambeth Palace with three East African bishops, William Peel of Mombasa, John Willis of Uganda (both supported by the Evangelical Church Missionary Society) and Frank Weston of Zanzibar (of the resolutely Anglo-Catholic Universities’ Mission to Central Africa). They had been summoned before the Consultative Body of the Lambeth

1  There is surprisingly little secondary literature on the 1913 Conference and its aftermath. An initial review of some of the early literature was made by A. C. Headlam in ‘Notes on Reunion: The Kikuyu Conference’, Church Quarterly Review 77 (1914), pp. 405–23, esp. pp. 414–23. See Stuart P. Mews, ‘Kikuyu and Edinburgh: the Interaction of Attitudes to Two Conferences’, in G. J. Cuming and Derek Baker (eds), Councils and Assemblies: Studies in Church History 7 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1971), pp. 345–59; Roland Oliver, The Missionary Factor in East Africa (London: Longmans, 1952), pp. 226–8; M. G. Capon, Toward unity in Kenya: the story of co-operation between missions and churches in Kenya 1913–1947 (Nairobi: Christian Council of Kenya, 1962); M. G. Capon, A History of Christian Co-operation in Kenya (Nairobi: Christian Council of Kenya, 1952); E. K. Cole, A history of church co-operation in Kenya (Limuru: St Paul’s College Press, 1957). More generally, see Eugene Stock, History of the CMS (London: CMS, 1899–1916), vol. 4, pp. 409–24; G. K. A. Bell, Randall Davidson (London: Oxford University Press, 1935), pp. 690–708. The issues between the Anglican missionary societies have been addressed in depth by Steven S. Maughan in Mighty England Do Good: Culture, Faith, and World in Foreign Missions of the Church of England, 1850–1915 (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2014), esp. pp. 436–7. See also Andrew Porter, Religion Versus Empire?: British Protestant Missionaries and Overseas Expansion 1700–1914 (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2004), pp. 325–8.

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Conference to discuss the crisis in the Church of England and the wider Anglican Communion emerging from the Kikuyu Conference.2 The Conference of sixty missionaries, twelve of whom were women, under the chairmanship of Willis, was held at the Church of Scotland mission station at Thogoto, Kikuyu, in what is now the Church of the Torch, about 7,000 feet above sea level ‘in the midst of charming and thickly wooded scenery’ midway between Mombasa and Lake Victoria in a climate resembling Scotland.3 Of the delegates and members at the conference the largest number (twenty) came from the Africa Inland Mission, an American non-denominational but predominantly Presbyterian Evangelical organisation which had been particular successful among the Kikuyu people.4 The next largest contingent was from the CMS (eighteen), while eight came from the Church of Scotland, two from the United Methodist Mission, and one from the Nilotic Independent Mission.5 Willis’s diocese covered both the Uganda protectorate, which had few non-episcopal missions, but also a part of British East Africa which, while dominated by Anglicans, had a complex mix of missionaries from five societies. His account of the conference, which he felt that Bishop Peel would have agreed with even though he had not seen it, emphasized the specific problems of the missionary context for Christian unity. Missionaries were forced to address what he called the dominant but ‘malleable’ paganism of the people as well as a strong ‘Mohammedanism’ with its ‘definite, clear-cut creed’ which was particularly strong in the coastal regions.6 In addition, he pointed out that like Islam the Roman Catholic Church presented a unified front whereas Protestants were divided into different and apparently competing denominations, something which could only have a detrimental effect on mission.7 There was thus a pressing need for some sort of ecumenical co-operation, which he

2  See The Archbishop of Canterbury [Randall T. Davidson], Kikuyu (London: Macmillan, 1915), p. 6. 3  J. J. Willis, The Kikuyu Conference: A Study in Christian Unity together with The Proposed Scheme of Resolution embodied in the Resolutions of the Conference (London: Longmans, 1913), p. 3. The first reports reached Britain through the Presbyterian minister, Norman MacLean, who described the Conference as ‘The most wonderful gathering I ever saw’ in The Scotsman (19 August 1913) (in Bell, Davidson, p. 690). 4  See James Karanja, The Missionary Movement in Colonial Kenya: The Foundation of Africa Inland Church (Göttingen: Cuvillier, 2009), esp. pp. 18–24. The AIM had been established in British East Africa in 1895 (the year that it became a British Protectorate), by Peter Cameron Scott. 5  Willis, The Kikuyu Conference, p. 24. 6  Willis, The Kikuyu Conference, p. 6. 7  Willis, The Kikuyu Conference, p. 7.

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felt was best embodied in a Federation with ‘a view to ultimate union of the native churches’.8 The Federation, according to Willis, was to pay due regard to the historic character of the denominations, which, for Anglicans, meant that the ‘consent of the ecclesiastical authorities of the Church of England’ had to be obtained so that the position of the East African churches within the Anglican Communion was not compromised.9 However, given that there were a mere twenty-three Anglican clergy working with the native population of four million in a country half as big again as the United Kingdom, some alliance with other societies seemed rational to ensure an even distribution of missionaries and to fend off the challenge of Islam.10 In the proposed Federation there would be common loyalty to creeds and Scripture but in each missionary district the different denominations would organise themselves as they saw fit.11 The mutual recognition of missionary districts led the Conference to propose a common membership of the ‘Holy Catholic Church of Christ’ through a mutually recognised baptism (even though this did not imply official membership of any other denomination).12 For Anglicans, church discipline – especially the requirement of episcopal confirmation before the reception of Holy Communion – presented specific difficulties. It was here, Willis held, that the circumstances of East Africa had to be taken into account in suggesting a change of practice: the scarcity of ministers in some denominations meant that there might be little alternative for many people – including native converts – if they were to receive communion at all. Similarly, and even more controversially, the problem of moving between mission districts for an increasingly mobile native population meant that some sort of recognition of the ministry of other denominations was required, together with ‘a certain amount of common form’ in liturgy although this would leave the sacramental rites to the particular denominations.13 There was also an evident need for a united approach to church discipline respecting morals. All this would then pave the way for a united native church in the future as the old denominational differences were overcome in a truly native church.

8   ‘The Proposed Scheme of Federation’ in Willis, The Kikuyu Conference, pp. 19–24, 19. 9   Willis, The Kikuyu Conference, pp. 8–9. 10  Willis, The Kikuyu Conference, pp. 10–11. 11  See the proposal on Mission Comity, no. I (Willis, The Kikuyu Conference, p. 21). 12  Willis, The Kikuyu Conference, p. 12. 13  Willis, The Kikuyu Conference, pp. 14–15. See the proposal on Public Worship, no. III, which even includes instructions on posture (Willis, The Kikuyu Conference, p. 22).

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Breaking with traditional practice, the Conference ended with a celebration of Holy Communion according to the Order of the Book of Common Prayer presided over by Bishop Peel in a Church of Scotland Church to which Nonconformists were admitted. This was, Willis wrote, ‘an exceptional occasion – an occasion which no one present is ever likely to forget’. He concluded: To repel at such a moment from a common participation might be justified by rule and dictated by a stern sense of duty; but it would have been in a sense to nullify the whole spirit of the Conference. We cannot but feel that, in the circumstances, the Master Himself would have justified the action, as His Presence beyond all question hallowed the scene.14 Hardly surprisingly, almost immediately after the Conference there arose a heated controversy which took the form of a flurry of Kikuyu-related letters, booklets and articles from different wings of the church ranging across subjects as diverse as the requirement for confirmation before reception of communion, to the nature of the apostolic deposit and the particularly thorny issue of episcopacy.15 Statements and counter-statements continued to be made through 1914 and 1915: there was a particularly heated exchange in The Guardian on 6 August 1914, only two days after the declaration of war, in response to the Lambeth meeting the previous week.16 For some Anglo-Catholics, whose views are discussed in this chapter, the issues emerging from Kikuyu were almost a matter of life and death for the Church of England. With typical hyperbole, in a letter to The Times of 29 December 1913, Charles Gore, Bishop of Oxford and leader of the AngloCatholics on the bench of bishops, commented: ‘I doubt if the cohesion of the Church of England was ever more seriously threatened than it is now.’17 The principal problem was that, in their commitment to the Missionary Federation, Willis and Peel had invited non-Anglicans to share in communion, an action which implicitly conceded the authenticity of non-episcopal churches implied by the proposals themselves. In particular, the proposals raised the question 14  Willis, The Kikuyu Conference, p. 17. 15  See the various Kikuyu Tracts (all published in 1914 by Longmans): H. M. Gwatkin, The Confirmation Rubric: Whom Does it Bind? (Is Confirmation Indispensable for Communion in the Church of England?); Episcopacy. 1. In Scripture; 2. In the Church of England; Eugene Stock, The Church in the Mission Field; Guy Warman, The Ministry and Unity; Arthur James Tait, What is our Deposit?; Handley Moule, That they all may be one. 16   The Guardian 6 August 1914, p. 988. 17   The Times, 29 December 1913.

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of the ‘validity’ of ministry (‘For the present … all recognised as Ministers in their own Churches shall be welcomed as visitors to preach in other Federated Churches’)18 and of precisely what was meant by the proposal which called for ‘common membership between the Churches of the Federation’.19 The proposal on sacraments – ‘the administration of Sacraments shall be normally by recognised Ministers of the Church occupying the District’20 – was equally challenging since it implied that, at least within their own districts, nonepiscopally ordained ministers could dispense valid sacraments and travelling Anglicans might reasonably be expected to receive them. In turn, members of other churches ‘residing temporarily in other Districts shall be supplied with cards on the back of which the Minister of the Church visited shall record attendances at Communion’.21 Once again this appeared to contravene accepted Anglican practice which required confirmation before reception of communion. In the brief concluding section on Church discipline, the proposals recommended that each Mission should decide on cases in discipline in its own sphere provided that ‘nothing in this constitution of the Federated Missions shall be so understood as to prejudice the Episcopal jurisdiction of the Bishops over all the members of their own Communion’.22 Despite this modest reassurance, however, clearly a great deal was at stake and threatened the key identities of the Church of England. What I show in this chapter is that the Anglo-Catholic voice dominated the debate and was given a particular boost in the particular circumstances of the war. The Anglo-Catholic position was discussed in a University Sermon preached at Oxford in February 1914 by Herbert Hensley Henson, at the time Dean of Durham, and one of the most prominent liberal controversialists of the day. He summarized the issues with typical wit and irony. His anxiety was that by not welcoming proposals for reunion, the Church of England was simply drifting into ecclesial isolationism. The nub of the issue was whether or not the episcopate was of the essence of the church or whether it was simply the form most suited to a particular context:23

18  Proposal on Ministry, no. I (Willis, The Kikuyu Conference, p. 21). 19  Proposal on Fundamental Provisions, no. I (b) (Willis, The Kikuyu Conference, 19) and Membership, V (Willis, The Kikuyu Conference, p. 23). 20  Proposal on Sacraments I (Willis, The Kikuyu Conference, p. 23). 21  Proposal on Sacraments VII (Willis, The Kikuyu Conference, p. 23). 22  Proposal on Discipline (Willis, The Kikuyu Conference, p. 234). 23  On this see my Bishops, Saints and Politics (London: T&T Clark, 2007), ch. 1; and Steffen Weishaupt, ‘The development of the concept of episcopacy in the Church of England from the nineteenth to the mid-twentieth centuries’ (Oxford DPhil, 2013).

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Observe the fatal simplicity of the reasoning, and its inexorable character. It takes for granted that the Divinely-appointed guarantee of a valid Eucharist is an episcopally ordained priest: and that the vitalising factor in a Christian Church is a valid Eucharist. Apart from the Bishop, there can be no true priest. Apart from a true priest, there can be no valid Sacrament. Apart from the valid Sacrament, there can be no visible Church.24 Against such a position Henson vigorously defended the Protestant identity of the Church of England and lamented such a narrow understanding which, he felt, ‘envenoms and perpetuates religious divisions’.25 Indeed, the persistence of the scandal of division, Henson held, which was the inevitable implication of the insistence on the essential character of the episcopate, ‘promises to make England secularist, and Africa Mohammedan’.26 In short, he concluded, ‘the union of the Protestant Churches would take away the greatest reproach of the Reformation, and wonderfully facilitate a better understanding of Evangelical Religion among the members of Evangelical Christianity.’27 As this chapter makes clear Kikuyu was one more event in helping to move the ecclesial identity of the Church of England and the wider Anglican Communion away from Protestantism towards a form of Catholicism rooted in a simplistic understanding of apostolic succession. 1

Anglo-Catholicism in Africa: Bishop Frank Weston

The Kikuyu proposals had deeply upset Frank Weston, who was based in the predominantly Muslim British Colony of Zanzibar itself, but with a diocese which stretched over a significant portion of German East Africa.28 Shortly 24  Hensley Henson, The Issue of Kikuyu: A Sermon (London: Macmillan, 1914), p. 7. 25  Henson, The Issue of Kikuyu, p. 23. 26  Henson, The Issue of Kikuyu, p. 22. 27  Henson, The Issue of Kikuyu, p. 26. 28  David R. Law (in ‘Frank Weston, the Kikuyu Controversy, and the necessity of episcopacy’, International Journal for the Study of the Christian Church 15:3 (2015), pp. 214–243) has given a comprehensive account of Weston’s role in the Kikuyu Conference and its aftermath which has looked in detail at the Lambeth Palace papers. See also Gavin White, ‘Frank Weston and the Kikuyu Crisis’, Bulletin of the Scottish Institute of Missionary Studies 8–9 (1992–93), pp. 48–55; Andrew Porter, ‘The Universities’ Mission to Central Africa: Anglo-Catholicism and the Twentieth-Century Colonial Encounter’ in Brian Stanley (ed.), Missions, Nationalism and the End of Empire (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2003), pp. 79–107, esp. pp. 87–8.

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after the Conference, in a letter to the Archbishop of Canterbury dated 30 September 1913, he even went so far as formally to accuse his fellow African bishops of ‘propagating heresy and committing schism’.29 In a series of letters and pamphlets, Weston developed his arguments in opposition to Kikuyu while also making some alternative proposals. Although he recognised the need for co-operation and did not seek to cross missionary district boundaries, he nonetheless felt that far too much of doctrinal significance would be sacrificed by the degree of inter-communion proposed at Kikuyu.30 He consequently produced a far more modest alternative set of proposals in March 1914.31 Although he admitted that no ‘one can rightly deny that there is a large field of action in which all Christians can combine, and the moral influence of such combined action would prove unspeakably valuable in heathen lands’ and that ‘it has already been proved possible for various Churches to co-operate over a large area of action’, nevertheless this did not require ‘sacrificing those particular dogmas and practices for the sake of which Christendom is disunited’. His proposed constitution was explicit in its denial of all the controversial aspects of the Kikuyu Federation. For instance, he asserted, ‘The Council shall not allow members to raise questions affecting the Christian ministry and sacraments, nor interfere in any way with represented Churches in their views of the same.’ Similarly, it ‘shall take no share in any policy by which Communicants of any one represented Church shall receive Holy Communion in another Church’. In addition there was to be no preaching in one church by members of another and no common training for the ministry. Weston had published the previous year an open letter Ecclesia Anglicana: What does she stand for? to the unfortunate Bishop Edgar Jacob of St Albans who had appointed B. H. Streeter, one of the leading modernists, as an examining chaplain.32 Streeter had edited the controversial Oxford collection Foundations in 1912 which had provoked a number of strong reactions, especially since some of the authors, including Streeter himself, had appeared to deny the historicity of the Resurrection.33 Weston connected what he regarded 29  See Canterbury, Kikuyu, 3. Hardly surprisingly, Davidson dismissed the charges, holding a formal interview with Weston on 6 February 1914. 30  Frank Weston, Ecclesia Anglicana: For what does she stand? An open letter to the Right Reverend Father in God, Edgar, Lord Bishop of St Albans (London: Longmans, 1913), p. 18. 31  Bishop of Zanzibar [Frank Weston], Proposals for a Central Missionary Council of East Africa (London: Longmans, 1914). 32  Weston, Ecclesia Anglicana, pp. 19–20. See also Weston’s letter to the Archbishop of Canterbury in The Guardian, 20 February 1914, p. 249, and the reply, pp. 249–50. On Weston, see my Bishops, Saints and Politics (London: T&T Clark, 2007), chapter 10. 33  On the Foundations controversy see Keith W. Clements, Lovers of Discord: TwentiethCentury Theological Controversies in England (London: SPCK, 1988), pp. 49–106; Thomas

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as the rationalisation of theology by liberals with the issues emerging from Kikuyu which had provoked his question. The identity of the church was under threat both by liberal theologians and Protestant-minded bishops. Weston felt that the German-inspired Gospel of modernism was nothing less than a ‘new religion’,34 and a betrayal of the historic inheritance of the faith: ‘[It] does not make men Christian in the accepted sense of the word, much less does it make them sons of the Holy Church of Christ. It is a new religion, and every soul attracted thereto means a new betrayal of the witness with which we are entrusted.35 The historical-critical method, Weston claimed, had so compromised truth by creating ‘mental chaos’36 that it made missionary activity, which depended on a clear and certain message, virtually impossible. Similarly, he went on, the power of Islam would never be broken by a ‘debating society’ but only by ‘the living, speaking church of the infallible Word incarnate’.37 For Weston, the Anglo-Catholic faith seemed far more suited to the African context than the rationalism of Protestantism: ‘With Africans who from childhood have learned to invoke the heathen dead, I have found in this Catholic Devotion [of invoking the saints] a very useful way of leading them to Christ alone as their Mediator.’38 Furthermore, he held that if the Church of England simply sought to ‘protestantize the world’ – which is how he interpreted the Kikuyu proposals – then he would no longer have ‘place or lot’ within her borders.39 In distinction, Weston held that true catholic unity required an inter-dependence established through communion with a catholic bishop and through him with Christ. The alternative was a denial of catholic truth: ‘If our position is so chaotic that a Bishop, consecrated for the very purpose, among others, of ordaining priests may publicly communicate with a Church without Episcopacy, the whole purpose of our life and work is gone.’40 A. Langford, In Search of Foundations: English Theology, 1900–1920 (Nashville, TN and New York: Abingdon Press, 1969), chapter 5; Alan Stephenson, The Rise and Decline of English Modernism (London: SPCK, 1984), chapter 5; A. M. Ramsey, From Gore to Temple (London: Longmans, 1960), chapter 6. In 1915 Weston excommunicated Bishop John Percival of Hereford who had appointed Streeter to a canonry (see The Guardian, 8 April 1915, p. 312). 34   Ecclesia Anglicana, p. 27. 35   Ecclesia Anglicana, p. 27. 36   Ecclesia Anglicana, p. 8. 37   Ecclesia Anglicana, p. 15. 38   Ecclesia Anglicana, p. 23. 39   Ecclesia Anglicana, p. 28. 40   Ecclesia Anglicana, p. 19.

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For Weston, the mission field, especially given the presence of the competing missionary force of Islam which he knew from first-hand experience, created a sense of urgency which meant that there was little space for the refined intellectual debate of an Oxford Senior Common Room. In an open letter to the Archbishop of Canterbury, which took the form of a preface to his booklet, The Case Against Kikuyu, published in early 1914, Weston made this clear: a ‘view possible in an Oxford study is not necessarily possible in the mission field … Questions that are left open in academic circles require definite solutions in the world’s market-places.’41 At the same time, he held that the Bishops of Uganda and Mombasa had ‘contravened’ what he believed to be ‘the fundamental principle of Church order’.42 He asked the simple question on which so much seemed to depend: ‘Is the Episcopate the expression of the mind of Christ or is it merely of human invention?’43 For Weston the answer was simple: before any true re-union could take place there was the need to discover what he called the ‘centre of union’. Indeed, until there was agreement on this fundamental principle, there was a sense in which all were ‘moving in a fog, each ready to help a brother in distress.’ Instead, he went on: We must then concentrate our power on winning from all Christians, catholic and non-catholic, an acknowledgement that in the local bishop is the Christ-given centre of union here on earth, and in the universal College of Bishops is the permanent bond of union between all members of the Church, of every nation and tongue.44 As an Anglo-Catholic, Weston saw the local bishop as the indispensable link with the universal church. Standing in communion with the bishop was sole the test of membership of the Catholic Church. At the end of his pamphlet Weston used an analogy from contemporary British politics as he likened the non-episcopal churches to the Ulster Volunteer Force which had been particularly disruptive in the years leading up to the First World War. Although non-episcopal churches might be ‘zealous, moral, even holy and saintly’, what they lacked was a ‘corporate relation to the King that can justify the term “part” or “branch”’. Since they failed to hold the ‘King’s Commission’, he went 41  Prefatory letter to the Archbishop of Canterbury in Weston, The Case Against Kikuyu. A Study in Vital Principles (London: Longmans, 1914), p. 4. 42   The Case Against Kikuyu, p. 33. 43   The Case Against Kikuyu, p. 7. 44   The Case Against Kikuyu, pp. 8–9.

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on, their claim to be branches of the Catholic Church fails.45 Consequently, it was only ‘in fellowship with the universal episcopate that East Africa would escape from the peculiarities of Scottish, American, German, and English systems of religious thought, and ultimately assimilate something of the universal religion of the Son of Man’.46 The universal message of Christ required a universal church united around the bishop, and a consequent move away from the particularities and independence of Protestant denominations or colonial churches. According to Weston, just as the English bishops standing in succession to the apostles formed the link with the ascended Christ, but were not principally Anglican or English, but representatives of One Holy Catholic Church, so the African bishop was ‘bound to present the Catholic religion’.47 Weston regarded it as the duty of the bishop to guard against any ‘exaggeration, or understatement, of any one point of doctrine. He is Catholic rather than English, and aims at becoming an African Catholic.’48 In short, he claimed that the African church was the ‘mystic Body of Christ made visible in a certain country amidst a certain people, and therefore exhibiting a local colouring and harmony with its local setting; yet none the less catholic and apostolic’.49 2

Responses in England

In England, Kikuyu and Weston’s responses to it were seldom out of the news in the months leading up to the First World War. In particular, his former teacher, William Sanday, Lady Margaret Professor of Divinity at Oxford, who shortly beforehand had announced his conversion to the cause of Modernism, entered the debate.50 In a letter to The Times Sanday suggested that Weston’s

45   The Case Against Kikuyu, pp. 62–3. 46   The Case Against Kikuyu, p. 22. 47   The Case Against Kikuyu, p. 37. 48   The Case Against Kikuyu, p. 40. Weston was continuing in the path he had taken from the outset of his ministry in Zanzibar. In his first charge he had claimed, ‘We are to our portion of Africa what the Apostolic Church was to the world of Asia Minor and Syria’ (Frank Weston, The First Charge of Frank, Bishop of Zanzibar to the Members of the Universities’ Mission European and African on the Occasion of the Synod and Conference of 1908 (London: W. Knott, 1908), p. 6). 49   The Case Against Kikuyu, p. 42. 50  On Sanday, see Bishops, Saints, and Politics, chapter 8.

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opinions about liberal theology could be explained by his circumstances of ‘isolation and the trying conditions of work in the tropics’: If the Bishop had spent the last ten years at home I must needs think that he would have a different impression both of the book that he condemns [Foundations] and of what he stands for … I would say in all seriousness that unless a legitimate place in it can be found for these men the days of the Church of England – and even of wider interests still – would be numbered…. [The] Church of England – nay, Christendom – needs us all, and … we cannot afford to spend our time in squabbling.51 On the very same day, however, a letter was published from Charles Gore, which called for a re-assertion of Anglican principles to achieve a new ‘comprehensive, but intelligible unity’.52 Gore was provoked into another of his regular defences of orthodoxy. A few months later he set out his views at greater length in an open letter to the people of his diocese: The Basis of Anglican Fellowship in Faith and Organisation, which was published on 7 April 1914. He called for a return to the witness of the ancient and undivided church in all matters of interpretation of the Bible and also for the expulsion of clergy who were unable to assent to the Creeds: ‘I feel certain that, unless without delay, we as the Church, through our Bishops declare that we cannot regard as tolerable the proposed licence, we must be regarded as corporately committed to allow what we refuse explicitly to disown.’53 Sanday’s own reply to the Bishop of Oxford Bishop Gore’s Challenge to Criticism, published on 13 May, called for a version of Christianity appropriate for the ‘cultivated modern man’.54 After impressive diplomacy from Randall Davidson, and mutual apologies from Gore and Sanday, however, the debate temporarily subsided.55 51   The Times, 29 Dec 1913. The Bishop of Winchester had made a similar judgement, as Weston himself reported in a letter of 20 September 1913 to Davidson. See Bell, Davidson, p. 692. 52   The Times, 29 Dec 1913. 53  Charles Gore, The Basis of Anglican Fellowship in Faith and Organisation (London: Mowbray, 1914), p. 14. 54  William Sanday, Bishop Gore’s Challenge to Criticism: A Reply to the Bishop of Oxford’s Open Letter on the Basis of Anglican Fellowship (London: Longmans, 1914), p. 31. On this debate see also Bell, Davidson, 677–89; and G. L. Prestige, Life of Charles Gore (London: Heinemann, 1935), pp. 346–51. 55  In a splendid compromise of 29 April 1914 they affirmed both the authority of the creeds and their anxiety ‘not to lay unnecessary burdens upon conscience’ (cited in Bell, Davidson, p. 683). Sanday to Davidson, 10 May 1914, in Bell, Davidson, p. 689.

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The Kikuyu Conference and the War

It comes as little surprise that, after the outbreak of war, some of the heat of the Kikuyu controversy evaporated.56 What was essentially an internal squabble between Anglo-Catholics and Evangelicals over the doctrine of episcopacy in the mission field quickly paled into insignificance as Britain prepared to engage in its first continental test of arms since the defeat of Napoleon. Nevertheless, despite the calls for brotherhood and an increased sense of unity, the ecclesiastical controversies stemming from Kikuyu continued to take up the Archbishop’s time until the Consultative Body finally reported at Easter 1915. Moreover, the tone of the debates which fed into the Kikuyu and Foundations discussions, as exemplified by Weston’s Ecclesia Anglicana, were reflected in the responses of theologians and churchmen as they linked German theological liberalism with militarism in the months following the outbreak of war. The charge of Germanophilia could easily be levelled against liberal theologians, as some Anglo-Catholics, including Lord Halifax, lay leader of the English Church Union, demonstrated in the early months of the war.57 4

The Archbishop’s Response

In the preface to his response to Kikuyu the Archbishop apologized for the delay which was due to the ‘darker objects’ that ‘crowd the field’. Nevertheless, he recognised that ‘what we have learned to call “Kikuyu questions” are creatures of persistent life, and their future reappearance is assured.’58 The Consultative Committee, which had met in the last week of July 1914, was charged with looking at the proposals and whether they ‘contravened any principles of Church Order’.59 In his response, Davidson was clear that the purpose of mission was to establish native churches so that the ‘message of the Lord Jesus Christ must not be permanently read … through European eyes, or be expressed in terms

56  See Desmond Morse-Boycott, The Secret History of the Oxford Movement (London: Skeffington, 1933), p. 238. 57  See my essay, ‘Missionaries, Modernism, and German Theology: Anglican Reactions to the Outbreak of War in 1914’ in Zeitschrift für neure Theologiegeschiche 22:2 (2015), pp. 151–67. See, for instance, The Guardian, 26 November 1914, p. 1313. 58  Canterbury, Kikuyu, p. 2. An abbreviated version was published in The Guardian (29 April 1915, p. 375). The High Church Guardian welcomed the report as marked by a ‘cautious liberality’ (p. 382). 59  Canterbury, Kikuyu, p. 5.

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of European speech’.60 Furthermore he felt it would be wrong to introduce the divisions of the colonial churches into the mission field.61 This method had been reaffirmed at the previous three Lambeth Conferences (1888, 1897 and 1908) and had been maintained by the two Bishops in the Kikuyu scheme.62 Co-operation, however, could be interpreted in very different ways. It was here that the Archbishop moved into the controversial territory of the essential nature of bishops when he asked whether those who did not have the historic episcopacy in their system were, in fact, extra ecclesiam.63 He reiterated the three points at issue which related to preaching by those not episcopally ordained, admission to communion of those not confirmed, and the ‘sanction directly or by implication given to members of our Church to receive the Holy Communion at the hands of Ministers not episcopally ordained’.64 The chief problem, according to Davidson, was that if one part of the Communion was to federate with those outside the Communion it would compromise the life and organisation of the whole Communion. Indeed, he went on, it would be rather like Devonshire federating with Normandy, which would compromise the nature of English sovereignty.65 This meant that establishing a missionary federation could never be a purely local decision, but would have to be deferred for discussion at the next Lambeth Conference (which at the time was scheduled for 1918). Answering the three specific questions, Davidson felt that there was no particular difficulty with ministers from other denominations preaching as long as they had the permission of the Bishop in an Anglican Church.66 Secondly, with regard to the admission of the unconfirmed to Holy Communion, he felt this was largely a matter for the diocesan bishop and had never been rigidly observed in the past.67 In the words of the Consultative Committee, it was ‘eminently a matter in which the administrative and pastoral discretion of the Bishop may well be exercised, especially, though not exclusively, in the mission field’.68 Thirdly, Davidson tackled the more controversial question of receiving communion in churches of other denominations.69 Noting that it was ‘an academic rather than a practical’ 60  Canterbury, Kikuyu, p. 9. 61  Canterbury, Kikuyu, p. 11. 62  Canterbury, Kikuyu, p. 15. 63  Canterbury, Kikuyu, p. 19. 64  Canterbury, Kikuyu, p. 19. 65  Canterbury, Kikuyu, p. 23. 66  Canterbury, Kikuyu, pp. 24–5. 67  Canterbury, Kikuyu, pp. 25–8. 68  Canterbury, Kikuyu, p. 28. The full report of the Committee of eleven bishops is printed as an Appendix, pp. 42–7. 69  Canterbury, Kikuyu, pp. 29–31.

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problem, he went on to stress the importance of the threefold ministry since to treat it in any other way would be to do ‘irreparable ill to the future life of the Church of Christ’. It would be an act of disloyalty ‘to be part of anything less or lower’. He concluded: ‘I do not say that the acceptance of what has been proposed … would of necessity bear the character. But the danger would be neither distant nor unreal.’70 Finally, Davidson tackled the service of Holy Communion at the conclusion of the Conference, which had been hailed by some present as a truly epochmaking event.71 In distinction, Davidson regarded it principally as a spontaneous act of devotion in the difficult circumstances of ‘heathendom’, and noted that it was far from unprecedented in the mission field.72 Nevertheless, he also felt that, in a period of rapid communication, ‘local words and acts have for the first time to be weighed in their bearing upon central plans and policies’ since there can easily be unforeseen consequences. Consequently, he thought that the ‘wisest and strongest Missionaries believe that we shall act rightly, in abstaining at present from such Services’.73 Davidson, in typical fashion, steered a cautious path, while clearly favouring the path towards reunion. The final decisions were deferred to the next Lambeth Conference which finally met in 1920. 5

Responses to the Archbishop

Following the publication of the Archbishop’s statement, Kikuyu was once again a hot topic of conversation throughout 1915. Even though the Archbishop’s views did not claim to be authoritative, the fact that he was writing as the leading bishop of both the Church of England and the Anglican Communion meant that they could never simply be private opinions. This caused some concern. For instance, Darwell Stone, Principal of Pusey House, Oxford, wrote to Bishop Gore of Oxford in May asking for clarification about the status of the Archbishop’s response. Noting his opposition to the proposal to allow the unconfirmed to receive communion, Gore nevertheless thought that the Archbishop was not speaking as metropolitan of the English Church or the Anglican Communion, but only in relation to the extra-provincial dioceses

70  Canterbury, Kikuyu, p. 31. 71  Canterbury, Kikuyu, pp. 32–6. 72  Canterbury, Kikuyu, p. 33. 73  Canterbury, Kikuyu, p. 33.

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of East Africa. It was thus a purely local decision.74 Other bishops concurred with this view while at the same time opposing the Kikuyu proposal for intercommunion.75 Later in the year, Charles Gore wrote an article in the Oxford Diocesan Magazine on the subject, where he was extremely clear about the issues which depended on a fundamental ecclesiological principle: there is no justification for refusing full recognition of Nonconformist ministers, in view of the spiritual fruits of their labours, except the belief (1) that the episcopate is of the essence of a valid ministry, and (2) that an episcopally ordained priest is necessary for a valid eucharist. As to the first of these positions I have elsewhere argued at length … I hate the argument, because I love Nonconformists, and admire them and acknowledge the abundant fruits of their ministry. But the conclusion seems to me quite irresistible that the whole idea of the visible Catholic Church has been from the beginning bound up with the institution of the ministerial succession which took shape universally and solely in the succession of bishops.76 Such a view meant that it was vital for the Church of England to be left out of any Protestant federation (which he recognised might be considered a harsh opinion).77 Other prominent Anglo-Catholics quickly produced responses. Francis Leith Boyd, Vicar of St Paul’s, Knightsbridge, for instance, wrote in a series of addresses to clergy published in June 1915, that the Kikuyu controversy, raised ‘grave questions and issues affecting the position of the Church of England as a whole, and that, while there is no place for panic or despair … there is every reason for serious and even anxious examination of the points that have been raised’.78 Not surprisingly, the leading Anglo-Catholic organisation, the English 74  Letters reprinted in The Guardian, 6 May 1915, p. 401. See also Leighton Pullan, Missionary Principles and the Primate on Kikuyu. Three addresses with some observations on the present German movement in the Church of England (Oxford: Mowbray, 1915), p. iii. 75  Similar comments were made by the following bishops: London (Winnington-Ingram) at the London Diocesan Conference (The Guardian, 6 May 1915, p. 405); Salisbury (F. E. Ridgeway) in a visitation charge (The Guardian, 20 May 1915, p. 457); Rochester (John Harmer) at his Diocesan Conference (The Guardian, 17 June 1915, p. 557); Chichester (Charles Ridgeway) (The Guardian, 8 July 1915, p. 630); and the Bishop of Winchester (Edward Talbot) at a Visitation at Guildford (The Guardian, 7 October 1915, p. 854). 76  Charles Gore, Crisis in Church and Nation (London: Mowbray, 1915), p. 5. 77  Gore, Crisis, p. 8. 78  Francis Leith Boyd, Facing Kikuyu (London: Longmans, 1915), p. 12. Boyd’s wordy pamphlet contains no surprises. He regards the Church of England as an intellectually credible form

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Church Union at its sixty-fifth anniversary meeting on 22 June 1915, devoted a significant amount of time to Kikuyu. In his opening address Lord Halifax, president of the Union, outlined the problems of Kikuyu, noting that although the Church had a duty to promote ‘the reunion of Christendom’, it had no less a duty ‘to guard and defend all the provisions we believe our Lord to have made for the government and continuance of his Church’.79 Later in the Conference a resolution was presented in response to the Archbishop’s statement on Kikuyu which was proposed by Athelstan Riley, the hymn-writer. It emphasized the point made by St Ignatius that only a valid Eucharist under the bishop can express ‘the Divine Gift … sought by Catholic Christians’. It also noted positively that the Archbishop had refused to sanction the ‘proposed practice of seeking Communion at the hands of ministers not episcopally ordained’. However – and this was the real bone of contention – the resolution noted that the invitation to ‘members of separatist bodies’ to the altars of the Church of England was ‘contrary to the principles of the Catholic Church as well as to a distinct rule of the Church of England, and likely to form a hindrance to the re-union of Christendom and to accentuate existing divisions amongst ourselves’. Riley welcomed the Archbishop’s condemnation of shared communion services as well as the forbidding of Anglicans from receiving in churches of other denominations, but predictably condemned his failure to offer ‘an adequate conception of the Church as a divinely-constituted supernatural body, with visible marks by which we might know it’.80 The same resolution was proposed again at the evening meeting by the somewhat eccentric Niall Campbell, Duke of Argyll and a staunch AngloCatholic. Seconding the motion, N. P. Williams, Chaplain of Exeter College, Oxford, noted that it was a ‘distasteful distraction’ from the realities of war, but also a cause of pain to have to oppose the Primate. And yet the ‘glove has been thrown down to us’ which forced a response.81 In his somewhat longof Catholicism against an intellectually incredible Roman Catholicism and the nonconformist bodies which ‘do not present Catholic Faith and Practice at all’ (p. 41). A similar argument was presented by H. F. B. Mackay, vicar of All Saints’, Margaret Street, in an address at his church (The Guardian, 1 July 1915, p. 599 and 8 July 1915, p. 630). Threats were later made by Mackay to withdraw financial support from missionary societies which did not speak out against Kikuyu by disciplining their bishops (The Guardian, 12 August 1915, p. 730). See also Fr Puller’s criticism of such a policy (The Guardian, 25 November 1915, p. 1039). 79   The Guardian (24 June 1915), p. 583. 80   The Guardian (24 June 1915), p. 585. The motion is also included as a Foreword in N. P. Williams, The Kikuyu Opinion (London: Longmans, 1915), p. 2. 81  Williams, The Kikuyu Opinion, p. 3.

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winded and dry address Williams went back to first principles which were encapsulated in the simple question: Is the Anglican Communion a Catholic or a Protestant body? Does it takes its stand with the ancient churches of historic Christendom, which are continuously descended from the Undivided Church of the first Christian millennium – or with the modern denominations which owe their origin to the cataclysm of the sixteenth century?82 Williams’ answers were both clear and predictable: Protestants had deviated from the visible church and sat light to particular clauses of the creeds. Because of this it was necessary to answer each of the three questions which the Consultative Committee had sought to address in the negative. Williams put the clear exposition of the catholic position, with which he evidently agreed, in inverted commas: Given the Catholic basis of authority, we are bound to conclude that it is improper in the highest degree to invite ministers of dissident sects to address the faithful in public worship, to admit schismatics, who have no intention whatever of purging their schism, to Holy Communion, or to encourage or even to permit the faithful of our own rite to seek communion in schismatical places of worship.83 Williams then went on to expound an alternative, Protestant, view which the Archbishop might also have put across, which saw the Church of England and the Anglican Communion as simply a human society which owed its origin to the Tudor monarchs. If he had given such a response, Williams held, then he would at least have been consistent, even though the ECU would have disagreed with it. The problem, however, was that the Archbishop had been inconsistent and had failed to offer any ‘clear statement of fundamental principles’. Anglicanism was thus neither Catholic nor Protestant but a strange tertium quid.84 This meant that there were two key criticisms of the Archbishop’s statement. First, it defied logic and was based upon a ‘profound self-contradiction, an inconsistent attempt to hold two utterly discordant and opposed theories of the nature of Church’. Secondly, from the Anglo-Catholic point of view, his judgements, at least on the first two questions, came down on the wrong side of 82  Williams, The Kikuyu Opinion, p. 7. 83  Williams, The Kikuyu Opinion, p. 7. 84  Williams, The Kikuyu Opinion, p. 13.

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the fence. Against this equivocation, Williams affirmed, ‘We stand by the faith and practice of the undivided Catholic Church and of the Holy Ecumenical Councils.’85 Although he was prepared to put Kikuyu into perspective and recognised that ‘it is not serious enough to justify a prodigal expenditure of emotion and nerve energy’ and did not require ‘wild and passionate denunciation’, he nevertheless felt that a ‘temperate and dispassionate’ repudiation was necessary. After all, he concluded, ‘we have logic, we have history’, and most importantly, we have ‘the unquenchable vitality of that Catholic life which has flamed up again and again in our Communion’ on our side.86 Other Anglo-Catholic responses were less temperate. Leighton Pullan (1865– 1940), for instance, Fellow of St John’s College, Oxford, from 1890–1930, wrote a lengthy booklet, Missionary Principles and the Primate on Kikuyu. Three addresses with some observations on the present German movement in the Church of England, where, as the title suggests, he rehearsed his earlier wartime preoccupation with Prussian militarism and its expression in liberal theology, but he also printed his address on ‘The Primate on Kikuyu’, the substance of which had been given at the evening English Church Union meeting.87 Pullan understood his role in Oxford as purging the church and university of what he regarded as German heresy which had encouraged ‘among many of our clergy, and some of our laity, a temper which was unpatriotic and even·anti-Christian’ and was even ‘asphyxiating vocations to the ministry’.88 Hardly surprisingly, Pullan was suspicious of men like Sanday and Hastings Rashdall, the Bampton Lecturer for 1915, and what he called ‘The Prussianizing of theology in Great Britain’ that was affecting the way in which the Creeds were being understood.89 Pullan ended his discussion of what he regarded the false directions taken by German theology by stressing the Great Commission with an ironic flourish: We shall either keep the Gospel of Galilee and carry it to the heathen, or we shall adopt the Gospel of Berlin. To the former belong the words of Jesus, ‘I am the Light of the world,’ and ‘Go ye, therefore, and teach all nations.’ To the latter belong the words of the Bampton Lecturer for this year, ‘It is doubtful whether Jesus expressly thought of himself as more than the Messiah and saviour of his own people.’90 85  Williams, The Kikuyu Opinion, p. 21. 86  Williams, The Kikuyu Opinion, p. 24. 87   The Guardian (24 June 1915), p. 586. 88  Pullan, Missionary Principles, p. iii. 89  Pullan, Missionary Principles, p. 10. 90  Pullan, Missionary Principles, p. 30.

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In his third address on ‘The Primate on Kikuyu’, Pullan’s venom is directed towards the Archbishop who, he claimed, ‘has wounded the consciences of very many thoughtful English Christians’, for, ‘just as this pronouncement on the Kikuyu question is considered official will it be an obstacle to the reunion of the severed provinces of Christendom.’91 Although Pullan stopped short of accusing the Archbishop of insincerity, he nevertheless felt that ‘if he obtains official sanction for his teaching he will cause the disruption of the Church of England.’92 Pullan developed his points in wholly predictable ways, stressing the indispensability of the Catholic form of the ministry in a single universal church. This, he felt, was quite distinct from what he called the Protestant view where the different societies each claimed that their ‘own system is truly a Church’. Like Williams he felt that the chief problem with the Archbishop’s response was that he had sought to combine the two theories. In practice this meant that he had simply decorated Protestant doctrine, ‘which forms the substance of his teaching, with fragments of Catholicism’. Using an architectural analogy, Pullan went on: ‘The result is like those mansions and colleges which Georgian architects perpetrated “in the Gothick taste.” The whole plan is nondescript or foreign, but certain doors and windows are feebly copied from an old English abbey.’93 There could thus be no true union with systems which did not derive their ministry from ‘Christ’s own appointment’, since such bodies were ‘outside the Church’ as had been shown by Charles Gore in The Church and the Ministry and Orders and Unity.94 While it would be wrong to cast judgement on any baptised person separated from the Church and even though friendships could be forged with Nonconformists, ‘we should do despite to both religion and history if we were to countenance the belief that a perfect devotion to Christ is compatible with adherence to any system which he did not found.’95 Pullan also took up the issue of confirmation. Again he found much to disagree with in the Archbishop’s response. While recognising the occasional need for episcopal dispensation as in the case of ‘an orthodox Christian’ such as ‘my friend the [Old Catholic] Bishop of Haarlem’ or an American churchman, the principle espoused by Davidson was far more inclusive which could easily open the flood gates in allowing Protestants to share in Communion.96 Pullan was also critical of any understanding of the Creed which permitted latitude 91  Pullan, Missionary Principles, p. 31. 92  Pullan, Missionary Principles, p. 32. 93  Pullan, Missionary Principles, p. 35. 94  Pullan, Missionary Principles, p. 36. 95  Pullan, Missionary Principles, p. 38. 96  Pullan, Missionary Principles, p. 40.

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of opinion, since by allowing ‘private esoteric meaning’ it would be impossible to know where to draw the line: ‘What shall we do when the Unitarian recites other clauses in the Creed, and then, if I may use a phrase recently imported by a Modernist into theology, says that he only meant them “in a Pickwickian sense”?’97 Predictably, Pullan objected to the suggestion that ministers of other churches should be allowed to preach since it was impossible to separate the ministry of sacrament and word. Besides, every minister was duty bound to represent the ‘tradition he has received’ which would mean a departure from the purity of doctrine.98 In the end, Pullan believed, everything hung on the cardinal Anglo-Catholic doctrine of Apostolic Succession: the threefold ministry was ‘granted by our King. Any ministry of merely human invention we regard as an infringement upon the crown rights of Jesus Christ.’99 He thus urged support for the resolution in opposition to Kikuyu and a withdrawal of support from missionary societies ‘which support bishops who act in accordance with such opinions as would support schismatical preachers to address native converts, or permit persons separated from the Church to receive the Holy Communion at the Lord’s table’. The Archbishop, he concluded, had made a false pronouncement which blurs, and sometimes ignores, the differences between the One Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church, and those societies which have violated fundamental laws of the Church’s life. Though it does not necessarily corrupt the innocence of the Church of England, it does tarnish her reputation and her honour. It has thereby given us a real cause of indignation. And any one who labours to remove the harm which has been done will deserve our ready and enthusiastic help.100 Pullan received a degree of criticism from defenders of the Archbishop, notably A. C. Headlam, at the time a professor at King’s College, London. In an article in the Church Quarterly Review on the Archbishop’s statement, which, he noted, no party could claim as a victory’,101 Headlam expressed his view that Anglo-Catholics had misappropriated the word ‘Catholic’, thereby robbing it of its proper sense of breadth which was based on a common baptism 97  Pullan, Missionary Principles, p. 40. 98  Pullan, Missionary Principles, p. 45. 99  Pullan, Missionary Principles, p. 47. 100  Pullan, Missionary Principles, p. 52. 101  A. C. Headlam, ‘Kikuyu: the Archbishop of Canterbury’s statement’, Church Quarterly Review 80 (1915), pp. 321–47, p. 331.

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rather than a common ministry.102 They had effectively confused certain practices with what is ‘really Catholic’ which he equated with ecumenical breadth rather than apostolic succession. In a further article in the next edition of the Church Quarterly Review, Headlam took issue with Pullan’s booklet directly. Pullan, he felt, though an able theologian, represented ‘an unpopular type of theology’ which meant that he was ‘almost precluded by the opinions he holds from receiving due recognition and receiving due honour of his ability, in either the Church or in the University’. He represented the ‘“extreme” school’, about which Headlam had written in his earlier article.103 ‘Has it ever occurred to Mr. Pullan’, he went on, ‘that he may sometimes be wrong, that the Prayer Book belongs to the Church of England, and that other interpretations may be legitimate as well as his?’104 He criticised the intransigence of men like Pullan, especially in their calls to withdraw support from missionary organisations unless they chastised their ‘errant’ bishops. He concluded by asking whether ‘a less rigid policy’ might have ‘more effective results in extending the conception of the Catholic Church’. After all, ‘strenuous teaching misses its aim unless it is also wise and well balanced’.105 Pullan replied to these charges at a meeting of the Anglican and Eastern Churches Association in October 1915, pointing to a Russian correspondent who had agreed with his views that there was no space for a Federation with the ‘Protestant sects’. Indeed, union with Protestants threatened the hope of future reunion with the great churches of Christendom. All in all, he concluded, the Archbishop’s confusion might ‘confuse the minds and benumb the hearts of our Eastern brethren’.106 Headlam, who was also an expert on the Eastern Church, provided a brief response in The Church Quarterly Review which accused Pullan of being ‘somewhat 102  A. C. Headlam, ‘Kikuyu: the Archbishop of Canterbury’s statement’, pp. 346–7. Headlam had cautiously welcomed the proposals from the beginning, as he noted in a letter to The Times (31 December 1913). In his earlier overview of the literature, ‘Notes on Reunion: The Kikuyu Conference’, Headlam thought that Willis’s report was a ‘loyal and statesmanlike document’. While emphasizing his catholic credentials he nonetheless felt that it was important to relax the rules to spread the faith and not to oppose those who are ‘perhaps over modern in the expression of their belief’. He did not ‘think that the intelligent Moslems of Zanzibar [would] think that Christianity is a less formidable opponent if they find the Bishops of Zanzibar, of Mombasa and Uganda working with other religious bodies in the conquest of the heathen world’ (pp. 422–3). 103  A. C. Headlam, ‘Mr Pullan’s Doctrine of the Catholic Church’, Church Quarterly Review 81 (1915–16), pp. 199–206, p. 199. 104  Headlam, ‘Mr Pullan’s Doctrine’, p. 204. 105  Headlam, ‘Mr Pullan’s Doctrine’, p. 206. 106  Pullan’s lecture was published along with a synopsis of Headlam’s article in The Guardian (28 October 1915), p. 943.

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rhetorical, we might almost say, vituperative, in tone’ and more suited to a political meeting.107 The goal of the Anglican and Eastern Churches’ Association, he felt, was rather ‘to represent the Russian Church as the ally of the extreme party in this country than of the Church of England’.108 Such responses clearly show that Anglo-Catholics were united in their defence of apostolic succession and had convinced themselves that unlike the Church of England, the Protestant churches of the Reformation were schismatic sects. Claiming the Church of England to be one and the same as the undivided church of the apostles, they regarded the creation of a Protestant Federation as a travesty that would scupper the future chances of reunion with the other catholic bodies of Christendom. The weakness of the liberal voice during the war meant that such views became increasingly mainstream. 6 Conclusion The divisive issues have not gone away even if Anglo-Catholicism is no longer in the ascendant: the competing Protestant and Catholic identities of Anglicanism, which to a large extent were products of the creative imagination of the different parties of the nineteenth-century church, continue to shape Anglican approaches to ecumenism and to joint ventures in mission.109 The clamour for an authority established on the apostles in the necessity of episcopacy gave impetus to the Oxford Movement and to the great Anglo-Catholic revival of the church that followed and it was this identity that came to establish itself as mainstream through the first few decades of the twentieth century. In this process, Kikuyu presented an excellent opportunity for Anglo-Catholics: the particular circumstances of the First World War meant that the embarrassing fact of the Reformation could be equated with the theology of the enemy. Protestantism seemed to hold out little hope. This was noted by Weston during the First World War as he continued his pleas for a truly native church. He spoke out vehemently as he joined British forces in Tanganyika (German East Africa) in the fight for liberating those he called ‘Prussia’s Black Slaves’.110 Anti-Germanism undoubtedly helped the Anglo-Catholic cause which rose to increasing prominence after the War: the model of reunion adopted in the 107  Headlam, ‘The Holy Catholic Church’, Church Quarterly Review 81 (1915–16), pp. 322–51, p. 323. 108  Headlam, ‘The Holy Catholic Church’, p. 325. 109  Mark D. Chapman, Anglican Theology (London: T&T Clark, 2012), chapter 1. 110  Frank Weston, The Black Slaves of Prussia: an Open Letter Addressed to General Smuts (London: Universities’ Mission to Central Africa, 1918).

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Lambeth Appeal of 1920 with its stress on episcopacy and in which the voice of Frank Weston was so prominent was very different from that of Kikuyu. Disputes similar to the Kikuyu controversy re-emerged during the process of setting up of the Church of South India which was inaugurated in 1947. AngloCatholics opposed the appointment of bishops from non-episcopal denominations without re-ordination and what they regarded as the homogenization of doctrine. The zealous convert, T. S. Eliot, for instance, wrote his Reunion by Destruction: Reflections on a Scheme for Church Union in South India – Addressed to the Laity. This was part of a series of pamphlets produced on behalf of The Council for the Defence of Church Principles, which was supported by the Church Union, with which it merged in 1952. It was originally known as ‘Father O’Brien’s Committee’, after its chairman, William Braithwaite O’Brien, Superior General of the Society of St John the Evangelist. Other prominent figures included Gregory Dix of Nashdom Abbey and Raymond Raynes of Mirfield. The Council was established ‘for the preservation of those fundamental principles of the Faith and Order of the Catholic Church which are clearly taught and enjoined in the Book of Common Prayer, in the belief that without these principles, which are now endangered by certain re-union proposals, the attainment of œcumenical reunion and the maintenance of the unity of the Anglican Communion are alike impossible’.111 In his pamphlet, Eliot claimed that ‘events in places as remote as Tinevelly and Dornakal may have consequences in every parish in England’,112 since, he held, somewhat apocalyptically, the ‘future of a Church of England, enlarged according to the pattern of South India, would be as an organ of the totalitarian state, charged with the preservation of morality in the interest of that state.’113 A number of Anglo-Catholic parish churches in England put up notices saying that they were not in communion with the Church of South India after it had lost what they regarded as a ‘valid’ ministry.114

111  T. S. Eliot, Reunion by Destruction: Reflections on a Scheme for Church Union in South India – Addressed to the Laity (Westminster: Pax House, 1943), inside front cover. Other pamphlets included E. L. Mascall, Priesthood and South India: a comparison of the proposed basis of union with the reply of the English archbishops to Pope Leo XIII (London: Council for the Defence of Church Principles, no date) and Frederick Hood, The danger to the apostolic faith as taught to us in the Book of Common Prayer (London: Council for the Defence of Church Principles, no date). 112  Eliot, Reunion by Destruction, p. 2. 113  Eliot, Reunion by Destruction, p. 20. 114  Alan Billings relates an account told him in the late 1960s by Professor Geoffrey Lampe of a notice in an East Anglian church porch which announced: ‘Communicants of the Church of South India are not welcome here’ (Alan Billings, Lost Church: Why we must find it again, London: SPCK, 2013, p. 103). See G. K. A. Bell, The Convocation of Canterbury and

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Nevertheless, the alternative Protestant voice of much of the Anglican Communion could not be silenced.115 An older Anglican identity forged in the Reformation in opposition to Catholicism survived as an undercurrent in so many of the missionary churches. This identity gradually re-established itself as they rose to prominence and provincial independence later in the century. The old party disputes were not silenced as a vigorous Biblicism and Protestant – and even Pentecostal – pietism shaped the identity of the many of the new provincial churches. Just as anti-Germanism provided a boost for attacks on liberal theology during the First World War, so anti-colonialism offered an opportunity for contextual attacks on ‘western’ hermeneutics and ethics. The competing identities of Anglicanism, which were clearly raised through the Kikuyu controversy, are still locked in mortal combat. the Church of South India: replies to some criticisms (London: Church Information Board, 1955). 115  Even during the War there were ‘Kikuyu’ type services at the front where Church of Scotland ministers celebrated communion for Anglican soldiers (and an Anglican chaplain distributed the wine). Reported by W. E. Sellars of Wesley Chapel, Rochdale in The Guardian, 23 September 1915, p. 831.

Chapter 6

The Kikuyu Proposals in Their Contemporary Ecumenical Perspective Charlotte Methuen 1 Introduction In 1919, George Bell, then Chaplain to the Archbishop of Canterbury, put together a collection of Documents bearing on the problem of Christian unity and fellowship, 1916–1920 in preparation for the forthcoming 1920 Lambeth Conference.1 This booklet was intended to resource discussions about Anglican relationships to other churches, both episcopal and non-episcopal. The documents included in Bell’s collection numbered eighteen.2 The list of contents indicates the wide range of ecumenical discussion which was taking place 1  G. K. A. Bell (ed.), Documents bearing on the problem of Christian unity and fellowship, 1916– 1920 (London: SPCK, 1920). Hereinafter Documents (1916–20). 2  They were: the first two Interim Reports of the English Committee for the World Council on Faith and Order, published in 1916 and 1918 [texts I and II]; the proposed Concordat between the Protestant Episcopal Church of America and the Congregational Churches in the USA (1919) [text III]; proposals for Church Union in South India, involving the Anglican Church, the South India United Church and the Syrian Mar Thomas Church (1919) [text IV]; the proposed Constitution of the Alliance of Missionary Societies in British East Africa, drawn up at Kikuyu in 1918, with notes on the conferences in 1913 and 1918, and on the Bishop of Zanzibar’s counter-proposals [text V with notes A and B]; the Bishop of London’s comments on proposals for reunion between the Church of England and the Wesleyan Methodist Church (1919) [text VI]; the Resolutions of the first Mansfield Conference (1919) [text VII], the covering letter to the Church of England Bishops and the Resolution of the second Mansfield Conference (1920) [text XVI], and a response to its Resolutions (1920) [text XVIII]; Resolutions on Christian Unity adopted by chaplains and YMCA workers in France (1919) [text VIII]; resolutions on the ‘basis for reunion’ adopted by the fourth Cheltenham conference (1919) [text XI]; a petition put to the convocation of Canterbury by a group of Anglo-Catholic clergy (1919) [text IX]; proposals for cooperation with non-conformists (1919) [text X], together with a note on the Canon Law of the American Episcopal church regarding ministers who were not episcopally ordained [note C]; an English Church Union resolution on ‘the Catholic Church and Corporate groups of Christians’ (1920) [text XVII]; findings ‘Concerning Christian unity’ put forward by a conference between Church of England and the Free Churches in Swanwick (1920) [text XIV]; notes on the interchange of pulpits (1919) [text XIII]; a memorandum signed by Church of England clergy (1919) [text XII]; and resolutions on intercommunion also put forward by a group of Church of England clergy (1920) [text XV].

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during this period: it includes, besides the Kikuyu proposals and two notes relating to them, reports from the English Committee of the World Council on Faith and Order, initial discussions about establishing a United Church in South India, and a range of initiatives and counter-initiatives in the English context. Its focus is English: this collection does not offer a comprehensive overview of ecumenical initiatives across the Anglican Communion in the period immediately following the First World War. Nonetheless, these are enlightening documents which make it possible to place the Kikuyu proposals in the context of other contemporary ecumenical initiatives and to judge the extent to which they engaged with the key issues emerging in the discourse of ecumenical theology. The collection also witnesses to the context of – and forms the backdrop to – the Appeal to All Christian People which was such an important fruit of the 1920 Lambeth Conference. This chapter focuses on the documents collected and presented by Bell, exploring in particular the approaches taken to episcopacy and to the question of pulpit exchange and intercommunion (including Eucharistic hospitality). Its aim is to assess how typical of the ecumenical mood of their time the Kikuyu proposals were.3 Excluding the Kikuyu proposals themselves, the documents presented by Bell fall into three, in part overlapping, categories. The first two documents had emerged from the initiatives, which began in the United States in 1910, to establish a World Conference on Faith and Order. Following a delegation to the British Churches in 1912, an English Committee was formed in April 1914 to consider and articulate areas of agreement and disagreement in questions of faith and order.4 The committee included both Anglicans and leading members of the Free Churches, and it continued its work throughout the First World War. Bell reproduced its first and second reports. These are explorations of faith and order questions in principle; they are rooted in the English context, but intended to apply also beyond it. The second category relates to proposals for relationships between specific churches outside England, or, indeed, the British Isles. Besides the Kikuyu proposals, Bell included two such documents: the proposed Concordat between the Protestant Episcopal Church and the Congregational Church in the USA, the precise status of which remains unclear, and the proposals to form a United Church in South India, which offers 3  For the relationship of the Kikuyu proposals and other schemes to the Appeal to All Christian People issued by the 1920 Lambeth Conference, see: Charlotte Methuen ‘The making of “An Appeal to All Christian People” at the 1920 Lambeth Conference’, in: Paul Avis and Benjamin M. Guyer (eds.), The Lambeth Conference: Theology, History, Polity and Purpose (London: Bloomsbury T&T Clark 2017), pp. 107–131. 4  Tissington Tatlow, ‘The World Conference on Faith and Order’, in Ruth Rouse and Stephen Charles Neill (eds), A History of the Ecumenical Movement 1517–1948 (London: SPCK, 1954), pp. 405–505; here pp. 407–12.

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detailed proposals concerning the organisation and polity of a united church. The remaining documents fall into a third category; church ‘reunion’, as church unity was at that time described, remains the ultimate aim, but these consider the possibilities of ‘intercommunion’ between the Church of England and other churches, focusing on pulpit exchange and eucharistic hospitality. These English proposals involve broadly similar churches as those in the first category, but their aim is more specific: to delineate (or in some cases effectively to prohibit) possible ways of working together. Churchmanship played a very important role in determining the different proposals set before the Church of England. This chapter discusses the documents of the first and third categories, before briefly turning to those in the second category, and finally considering the Kikuyu proposals in the context of these other ecumenical endeavours. 2

Preparatory Reports from the English Faith and Order sub-Committee

England’s Faith and Order sub-Committee brought together members of the Free Churches with representatives of the Church of England, who had been nominated by the Archbishops of Canterbury and York.5 The subCommittee’s stated aim was to consider agreement in ‘matters of faith’ and ‘matters of order’, and to identify differences in matters of order. In matters of faith, the sub-Committee affirmed that all people have some knowledge of God, but that this knowledge reaches ‘culmination and completeness’ in Christ.6 They saw the distinctive revelation in Christ, as contained in the Old and New Testaments, as the basis of the life both of the Church and of individual believers. From this, as the creeds affirm, the doctrine of God is derived, from which all other doctrines flow (7).7 This agreement in ‘matters of faith’ was congruent with the first three articles of the Lambeth Quadrilateral. 5  Documents (1916–1920), pp. 9, 14. The first report was signed by the Bishops of Bath and Wells (George Kennion), Winchester (Edward Talbot) and Oxford (Charles Gore), the Wesleyan Methodists W[illiam] T[heophilus] Davison and J[ohn] Scott Lidgett, the Congregationalist A[lfred] E[rnest] Garvie, the Baptist J[ohn] H[oward] Shakespeare, the Presbyterian C[harles Archibald] Anderson Scott, the former Editorial Secretary of CMS, Eugene Stock, and the general secretary of SCM, Tissington Tatlow. The signatories to the second omitted Anderson Scott but included the Anglicans H[enry] L[eighton] Goudge, then canon at Ely (from 1923 Regius Professor of Divinity at Oxford), and William Temple, at that time rector of St James’s, Piccadilly; the Congegrationalist and Principal of Mansfield College W[illiam] B[oothby] Selbie, and the Quaker H[erbert] G[eorge] Wood. 6  Documents (1916–1920), p. 6. 7  Interestingly, but not relevant to this study, the Commission also remarked that it saw no contradiction between the acceptance of miracles and the principle of order in nature which

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Agreement on the fundamental nature of Scripture, on the creeds, and on the two dominical sacraments was not disputed amongst the members of the sub-Committee. More complex were questions of order. The sub-Committee affirmed the visibility of the Church: believers should come together to constitute a ‘visible society, capable of common witness and activity’. This society would recognise the sacraments of baptism and the Lord’s Supper to be ‘declaratory symbols, effective channels of his grace and gifts for the salvation and sanctification of men.’ It also affirmed agreement on the importance of viewing the church as a corporate fellowship as well as in terms of individual fellowship, and also on the necessity of a ‘ministry of manifold gifts and functions’ in order that the unity and continuity of the witness and work of the society might be maintained. A number of areas of disagreement were identified. In particular, to what extent could variety in polity, creed and worship be allowed? The sub-Committee raised the question of the conditions which determined whether sacraments would be viewed as valid, and pointed to the question of whether the authority of the ministry is derived ‘though an episcopal or a presbyteral succession or through the community of believers or by a combination of these’.8 These questions of church order would form a central focus of the sub-Committee’s discussions, and would also prove central and on-going points of disagreement within ecumenism. The centrality of these questions of order became apparent in the second interim report. This first highlighted the need for Faith and Order work, arguing that the approach taken by the Life and Work movement was not enough. ‘The visible unity in the Body of Christ is not adequately expressed in the cooperation of the Christian churches for moral influence and social services’, the sub-Committee believed, but could ‘only be fully realised through community of worship, faith and order, including common participation in the Lord’s Supper. This would be quite compatible with a rich diversity in life and worship.’9 From this perspective, joint Christian social action could not suffice as the basis for unity. The second report returned to the question of episcopacy. Here the subCommittee was able to acknowledge ‘the position of Episcopacy in the greater part of Christendom as the recognised organ of the unity and continuity of the Church’ and to affirm that the Episcopal Churches should not be required underlies scientific enquiry; miracles were, they thought, coherent with historical exegesis. Documents (1916–1920), p. 7. 8  Documents (1916–1920), p. 8. 9  Documents (1916–1920), p. 11.

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to abandon it. At the same time, and in language that would be picked up in the 1920 Lambeth Conference’s Appeal to All Christian People, the subCommittee recognised that non-Episcopal churches ‘have been used by the Holy Spirit in His work of enlightening the world, converting sinners, and perfecting saints’. The challenge, they suggested, was for churches to find a way of approaching each other ‘not by the method of human compromise, but in correspondence with God’s own way of reconciling differences in Christ Jesus’. This would involve ‘a willing acceptance for the common enrichment of the united Church of the wealth distinctive of each.’10 Finally, the sub-Committee articulated three ‘necessary conditions of any possibility of reunion’: that ‘continuity with the Historic Episcopate should be effectively preserved’; that it should ‘re-assume a constitutional form’, entailing the election of bishops by clergy and people and the exercise of the bishop’s ministry after election; and thirdly, that ‘no Christian community should be expected to disown its past.’11 Church order, and specifically episcopacy, was clearly – and, given article 4 of the Lambeth Quadrilateral, unsurprisingly – emerging in these discussions as one of the key issues. 3

Proposals for ‘Intercommunion’ between English Churches

The findings and concerns of the English Faith and Order sub-Committee were reflected in discussions between churches in England during 1919 and 1920. In February and March 1919, the Bishop of London, Arthur Winnington-Ingram, gave two addresses in which he outlined proposals for reunion between the Church of England and the Wesleyan Methodist church, the fruit of two years of informal conferences.12 He considered that ordination was not the primary problem. ‘If you can get first of all a date after which all ordinations will be considered valid by both bodies, you have … arrived at a point after which automatically the division between the two bodies will cease.’13 This would necessitate ‘such ordination in both bodies as shall satisfy the ideas – scruples, if you like – of members of both bodies.’14 He did not see such an ordination as a problem for Anglicans since, he pointed out, ‘we have always had presbyters to share with the bishop the responsibility of ordination’;15 the change would be for Wesleyans, who would need to include a bishop in their ordinations. This 10   Documents (1916–1920), p. 12. 11   Documents (1916–1920), p. 13. 12   Documents (1916–1920), p. 48, n. 1. 13   Documents (1916–1920), p. 48. 14   Documents (1916–1920), p. 49. 15   Documents (1916–1920), pp. 48–9.

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would require ‘a number’ of Wesleyan superintendents and presidents to be identified and ordained as bishops. Once this had taken place, the Wesleyan Methodists should continue as a distinct order within the Church of England, with their own liturgical practices and their own structures of oversight. In the interim period, Winnington-Ingram suggested, Wesleyan ministers who wished to preside at Holy Communion in the Church of England would need to be ordained by a bishop. Those who did not wish to be ordained could, having agreed to a standard of faith, ‘exercise their power of preaching’ in Church of England churches.16 For Wesleyans who chose to have hands laid on them by an Anglican bishop, an affirmation should be made: Be it known … that the ordination of AB … is not intended by either party to express adverse judgement on the spiritual value of the ministry previously exercised by him, but to provide for the future that his ministrations shall have all the authority committed by God to men for that office which both parties may recognise without scruple.17 This incorporation of free churches into the Church of England in a kind of ‘ordinariate’ was also suggested in a submission by the English Church Union in March 1920. This urged that Corporate groups of Christians … ought to be received into Communion … if they show a desire to close the schism and are found orthodox. They may then lawfully continue as corporate groups, retaining such features of their former organisation as are consistent with Catholic faith. Their ministers, if they desire it … should forthwith be admitted to Holy Orders.18 The Church Union statement also emphasised ‘the necessity of episcopal ordination’.19 This was the key point. For Winnington-Ingram, in contrast, the ‘rather more difficult question’ was not ordination but confirmation, which he saw as a necessary precursor to the reception of Holy Communion in the Church of England. Despite his interest in confirmation, Winnington-Ingram’s sermon suggests that the primary concern in the conversations between the church of England and the Wesleyan Methodists had in fact been ordination. The Mansfield 16   Documents (1916–1920), p. 51. 17   Documents (1916–1920), pp. 51–2. 18   Documents (1916–1920), p. 87. 19   Documents (1916–1920), p. 87.

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Conferences of January 1919 and January 1920, which brought together Free Church representatives and more evangelically-inclined Anglicans also focused on the practical steps which might be taken to deepen relationships, but these conferences too had to face the question of the recognition of orders. The Mansfield conferences sought to lay out the steps which would be necessary to achieve ‘reunion’. Firstly, and fundamentally, the first Mansfield conference saw the need for mutual recognition of each other’s churches as churches. Such a recognition ‘must involve … reciprocal participation in the Holy Communion, as testimony to the Unity of the Body of Christ’.20 The question of order was also important. The First Conference recognised, ‘with the sub-Committee of “Faith and Order,” in its second Interim Report, the place which a reformed Episcopacy must hold in the ultimate Constitution of the Reunited Church,’ although it also affirmed: ‘we do not doubt that the Spirit of God will lead the Churches of Christ, if resolved on Reunion, to such a constitution as will also fully conserve the essential values of the other historical types of Church Polity, Presbyterian, Congregational, and Methodist’ (54– 55). This proved to be too ambiguous, and the report of the second Conference was at pains to emphasise that all who had attended the first ‘were heartily at one in the conviction that the Re-united Church must be episcopal’.21 The first conference also offered a series of practical suggestions for deepening relationships between the churches, including interchange of pulpits (‘under proper authority’), ‘gatherings of Churchmen and Nonconformists’ for study and prayer, local conferences, the undertaking of joint missions, the joint production of literature, and the establishing of interdenominational committees for social work.22 The second Conference agreed resolutions which were sent to the archbishops of Canterbury and York, the diocesan bishops of the England and Wales, and the heads of the Free Churches: We are in entire accord in our common recognition of the fact that the denominations to which we severally belong are equally, as corporate groups, within the one Church of Christ; and that the efficacy of their ministrations is verified in the history of the Church. We believe that all dealings between them should be conducted on the basis of this recognition, which is fundamental to any approach towards the realisation of the Reunited Church, for which we long and labour and pray.

20   Documents (1916–1920), p. 54. 21   Documents (1916–1920), p. 82. 22   Documents (1916–1920), p. 55.

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We agree that, in order to give outward and visible expression to this principle of recognition, the approach should be made along the following lines, as parts of one scheme: – 1. Interchange of pulpits, under due authority. 2. Subject to the same authority, mutual admission to the Lord’s table. 3. Acceptance by ministers serving in any one denomination, who may desire it, of such authorisation as shall enable them to minister fully and freely in the churches of other denominations; it being clearly stated that the purpose of this authorisation is as above set forth and that it is not to be taken as re-ordination or as repudiation of their previous status as ministers in the Church Catholic of Christ.23 The question of the recognition of orders was here placed within the context of a series of practical suggestions which, the participants of the Conferences suggested, would represent steps towards ‘reunion’. A similarly practical approach was taken in the ‘Resolutions on Christian Unity’, drafted in 1919 by eighteen chaplains and YMCA workers in France. These too recommended that Christians of different denominations should take ‘united action’ on ‘all matters affecting the social and moral welfare of the people’; that joint conferences, conventions and retreats should be ‘a regular and normal part’ of the lives of the churches; that clergy should ‘as an act of Christian courtesy’ attend each other’s induction services; and that, ‘as God the Holy Spirit has endowed the various Churches with prophetic gifts in varying degrees, interchange of pulpits (under the due authority of the Churches concerned) would contribute to the development of Christian fellowship and the spiritual enrichment of the whole body.’24 The chaplains had also, with ‘anxious consideration’, discussed the question of intercommunion. They concluded that ‘there are many difficulties surrounding the question’ but felt that it should be allowed, ‘at least on such occasions as joint Conferences and Retreats, where the spirit of fellowship, already existing, is deepest and truest.’25 These suggestions were rooted in the experience of working with soldiers in France, a context in which denominational differences had widely been felt to be of less significant than the pastoral and sacramental needs of troops under fire. That the post-War context called for church unity was echoed by proposals which emerged from a conference of members of the Church of England and 23   Documents (1916–1920), pp. 83–4. 24   Documents (1916–1920), p. 57. 25   Documents (1916–1920), p. 58.

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some free churches at Swanwick in December 1919. In them the participants affirmed the need for the churches to speak as one: The present situation demands the corporate witness of one Church. The furthering of Foreign Missionary enterprise, the promotion of the League of Nations, the re-ordering of society – in a word the establishing of the Kingdom of God, are tasks with which we cannot cope as individuals or as separate Churches. We cannot commend fellowship to the world while as Christians we are divided.26 The ultimate aim, the conference insisted, must be ‘the complete union of all Christian believers in one visible Body.’ In pursuance of this aim, they suggested, members of all churches ‘should be free to share in one another’s communions … under special circumstances such as … (a) when there is no communion of their own Church available (b) when the Christians of different Churches are meeting together for fellowship and conference, and on special occasions of joint action and witness.’ Moreover, in preparation for the re-union of the Churches, ‘a widespread development of local interdenominational activity and fellowship should be encouraged.’27 Christian unity should be the churches’ priority. Intercommunion was also felt to be an important step by the drafters of a set of ‘Resolutions on Inter-Communion’ signed by 150 Church of England clergy in January 1920. These resolutions affirmed the conviction that ‘it is our duty to admit to Holy Communion baptised and communicant members of other Christian Churches which accept the first three conditions of the Lambeth Statement (1888) who may desire to communicate with us’ and saw ‘no ground in principle’ why this invitation should not be reciprocal. They also had ‘no objection in principle to solemn acts of Inter-communion with the members of such Churches upon National and other special occasions, as expressions of the unity that underlies our present divisions’. However, they were clear that they had not tackled ‘the question of the interchange of ministrations between Episcopally ordained ministers and those not Episcopally ordained’.28 The suggestion that a way forward might be found on the basis of the first three articles of the Lambeth Quadrilateral was also expressed in a Memorandum issued in July 1919 by a further 137 Church of England clergy. This, however, took a more stringent line. It recognised that ‘those organised 26   Documents (1916–1920), pp. 74–5. 27   Documents (1916–1920), pp. 73–4. 28   Documents (1916–1920), p. 77.

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Christian Communions which accept the first three Articles of the Lambeth Statement, but which are in our view deficient in Order through not having retained the Historic Episcopate, are nevertheless true parts of the one Church of Jesus Christ’ and that ‘their Ministry, in and for their own Communions, is a true Ministry of the Word and Sacraments’, adding, ‘we acknowledge with reverence and gratitude the operation of the Holy Spirit among them, and in their Ministry’. However, at the same time, it reiterated the conviction that ‘Episcopacy is demanded both by history and by the needs of Ultimate Unity, and is the only practical basis of Reunion and Reconstruction.’ The memorandum concluded that ‘the Ministry and Sacraments of Non-Episcopal Churches are not inoperative as means of grace, but irregular from the point of view of historic Catholic order.’29 This, they hoped, would offer a way forward in discussion with members of the Free Churches. Calls for practical steps including pulpit exchange and intercommunion were echoed by the fourth Cheltenham conference, held in July 1919, a gathering of ‘Evangelical Churchmen both Clerical and Lay’, which also produced resolutions pertaining to reunion. Affirming ‘(1) that the ultimate goal of unity is one visible Church founded upon the Lord Jesus Christ, into which all Churches, without breach of continuity with their past, can bring their special gifts – thus providing the widest variety in unity’,30 the resolutions proposed: (2) That as a witness to the fact of Spiritual Unity, interchange of pulpits with the accredited ministers and reciprocal inter-communion with the members of the Evangelical Free Churches are desirable (3) That the Bishops of the National Church be requested to declare their sanction of the participation of the ministers of the Non-Episcopal Church in the services at the celebration of the Peace in the Cathedrals and Churches; and further that all baptized and recognised members of those churches desirous of doing so should be invited to join in the Holy Communion on that occasion.31 At the same time, the conference also reiterated a resolution first passed in 1917: ‘That no proposals for reunion which would involve the re-ordination of ministers would be welcome or practicable.’32 This position was clearly

29   Documents (1916–1920), pp. 68–9. 30   Documents (1916–1920), p. 66. 31   Documents (1916–1920), p. 66. 32   Documents (1916–1920), p. 67.

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incompatible with the position of those who saw Free Church ordinations as at best ‘irregular’. The suggestion that pulpit exchange might offer a first step towards church unity was also put forward by the Bishop of Norwich, Bertram Pollock, in a sermon preached to mark the 250th anniversary of St Mary’s Baptist Church, Norwich. In a letter to The Times on 30 August 1919, a group of Free Church clergy including P. T. Forsyth, J. Scott Lidgett, and J. H. Shakespeare noted that the bishop had advocated the interchange of pulpits between ministers of the Church of England and of the Evangelical Free Churches at ‘usual normal worship … under carefully specified conditions’, which were: that the preacher ‘assent to the first three articles of the Lambeth Quadrilateral’; that the preacher ‘should not deal with the subject of church order unless invited to do so’; and that ‘the interchange has the consent’ of the ‘proper and regular authorities’. The Free Church clergy found this ‘a very cautious proposal’ but ‘definite and practical and … made by a Bishop of the Church of England’, and they hoped for a ‘sympathetic and practical response.’33 The Bishop of Norwich had spoken of pulpit exchange in the context of normal services. Others felt that this would not be appropriate. In July 1919, proposals for ‘cooperation with non-conformists’ were put forward by a joint committee of the Convocation of Canterbury, which suggested that ‘upon special occasions of public importance’ members of other denominations might ‘from time to time’ be invited by the incumbent and churchwardens with the approval of the Church Council and the bishop to ‘join in speaking and offering prayer in consecrated buildings’ so long as ‘in all cases what is so done is outside the regular and appointed services of the Church’ and that Church of England clergy might accept invitations to take part in the services of other denominations provided that these were ‘of a special character’ (i.e. not part of the ordinary pattern of worship) and the clergyman had obtained the prior consent of the bishop and also of the incumbent if the service in question was not taking place in his own parish.34 However, a minority report disagreed with these proposals, believing that they would ‘tend to conceal differences rather than remove them’ and finding that greater agreement in questions of faith and order should first be sought.35 Other dissenting voices were also raised. A petition sent by a group of AngloCatholic clergy to the Archbishop of Canterbury and the Upper House of the Convocation of Canterbury in May 1919 conceded that ‘it is not inconsistent 33   Documents (1916–1920), p. 72. 34   Documents (1916–1920), pp. 62–4. 35   Documents (1916–1920), p. 65.

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with our principles to meet with members of non-episcopal churches for public discussion with introductory prayer’ and that they might also attend ‘meetings in which members of non-episcopal Christian bodies join, held for the purpose of prayer as well as discussion … in certain special circumstances’ (p. 60). However, these clergy believed, ‘we ought not to take part in united services either in our places of worship or in those of non-episcopal bodies.’ Moreover, for these clergy, pulpit exchange was unthinkable: ‘It is not possible for us in any circumstances to preach or minister in the places of worship belonging to non-episcopal bodies, at any of their services, though we may at their invitation expound our beliefs to them subject to the consent of the bishop and the parish priest.’ Therefore, they concluded: ‘There are no circumstances in which we can invite members of non-episcopal bodies to minister or preach in our Churches.’ In addition, they excluded the possibility of eucharistic hospitality: ‘It is not possible to admit members of non-episcopal bodies to Communion, except in the case of a dying person who has expressed a desire for reconciliation with the Church.’ The Pusey House resolutions also identified obstacles to reunion, which included, they thought, not only ‘the question of Orders’, but also ‘serious divergence of belief on central doctrines of the faith or as to the nature of the Church and Sacraments’, disagreements about the administration of the sacraments, and ‘an unwillingness to assent to any form of Creed’.36 A similarly dissenting note was sounded in April 1920 in a reply to the resolutions of the Second Mansfield Conference, to which were attached eighty signatures of clergy and leading laymen who held ‘the Catholic doctrine of Ordination and of the conditions of a valid Eucharist’. They saw the Mansfield proposals as going against this understanding through an assumption that ‘no particular kind of ministry’ was required for either ‘the constitution of the Church’ or the celebration of the Eucharist, and through their failure to demand that an ordained member of non-episcopal denominations should ‘have to contemplate what he would call re-ordination, or what we should call ordination’.37 Pulpit exchange without clarity would also, they felt, ‘promote not unity but unreality and discord’. To proceed in this way would be, thought the signatories, to court ‘disaster’. Whilst the authors recognised that God ‘can give the gifts of His Spirit and His grace as and when He pleases’ (citing the ‘abundant evidence of the action of the Holy Spirit’ in the Free Churches and amongst the Society of Friends), the question that they were concerned about was ‘not, How are we to estimate the history of the past? but, How are we to secure reunion in the future?’ The signatories affirmed that ‘there is no 36   Documents (1916–1920), p. 61. 37   Documents (1916–1920), pp. 88–9.

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hope of reunion except on the basis of the Catholic principle of the episcopal succession.’38 These documents from the English context demonstrate the wide range of views within the Church of England. Whilst some were keen to move quickly to build relationships with the Free Churches, others felt that to do so would be to fail to hold to important principles, and in particular the significance of the episcopacy. Churchmanship clearly played a role here, with Evangelical and Broad Church Anglicans tending to be more open to the possibilities of working more closely with the non-Conformists, whilst their Anglo-Catholic counterparts affirmed a need for a level of agreement on sacramental theology and ecclesiology which if taken seriously would have prevented them from sharing communion with many liberal and most evangelical Anglicans. The Lambeth Quadrilateral had clearly been accepted as a key and definitive statement of the principles upon which unity might be sought. The first three articles were cited as a basis for doctrinal unity, whilst the fourth article forced Anglicans and their ecumenical partners to grapple with questions not only of faith but also of order. These documents also show, however, the strong (and almost unanimous) emphasis on the important contribution of the ‘nonEpiscopal’ churches and the spiritual value of the ministries of those churches. This would be the approach taken also in the Appeal to All Christian People. It is also striking that already at this stage the recognition of other churches and both pulpit exchange and eucharistic hospitality were emerging as means of deepening ecumenical relationships. This approach would prove central to bilateral relationships in the 1970s and 1980s, and underlies the Meissen, Reuilly, and Fetter Lane agreements and the Anglican-Methodist Covenant. 4

Proposals Relating to Anglican Churches Other Than the Church of England

Bell’s collection includes three further documents: the Kikuyu proposals themselves, a proposed concordat between the Protestant Episcopal Church and the Congregational Churches in the USA, and proposals for a united church in South India. The South India proposals affirmed that the church must preserve congregational, presbyterian and episcopal elements, thus emphasising the responsibilities of every church member, the role of synods or assemblies, and the 38   Documents (1916–1920), p. 90.

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importance of a representative and executive element of leadership.39 The common ground upon which these proposals were to be built was the affirmation of both the historical episcopate and the spiritual equality of every member, along with agreement on the fundamental nature of Scripture, the creeds and the two sacraments, that is, agreement on articles 1–3 of the Lambeth Quadrilateral. The proposals emphasised that ‘the terms of union should involve no Christian community in the necessity of disowning its past’ and that ‘we find it no part of our duty to call in question the validity of each other’s orders.’40 The Mar Thoma church saw this unity as based ‘not on any basis of compromise but on one of comprehension, where each body shall contribute its treasures and tradition to the enrichment of the whole’.41 The South India United Church confirmed the Lambeth Quadrilateral, and was prepared to accept an elected episcopate with bishops who would ‘perform their duties constitutionally’.42 It saw as a condition of union that ‘all its present ministers (presbyters) shall after union be recognised as ministers (presbyters) without re-ordination’43 and also stated that it was not prepared to give up intercommunion with other evangelical churches.44 The Concordat prepared by the Protestant Episcopal Church and Congregational Churches in the USA in March 1919 affirmed: ‘It is our Lord’s purpose that believers in Him should be one visible society.’45 This ‘cannot be realised without community of worship, faith, and order, including common participation in the Lord’s Supper. Such unity would be compatible with a rich diversity in life and worship.’ The Concordat proposed that the two churches should acknowledge the existence of the episcopate ‘in the greater part of Christendom’ as an organ of unity and continuity and that members of episcopal churches ought not to be expected to abandon it. At the same time, non-episcopal churches had been ‘used by the Holy Spirit in His work of enlightening the world, converting sinners, and perfecting saints’. The Concordat proposed that congregational ministers should be episcopally ordained. These proposals seem not to have been taken further.

39   Documents (1916–1920), pp. 25–6. 40   Documents (1916–1920), p. 26. 41   Documents (1916–1920), p. 28. 42   Documents (1916–1920), pp. 33–4. 43   Documents (1916–1920), p. 35. 44   Documents (1916–1920), p. 37. 45   Documents (1916–1920), p. 15.

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The Kikuyu Proposals

In July 1918, at a conference held at Kikuyu, the missionary societies working in the British East Africa Protectorate, namely the Church Missionary Society, the Church of Scotland Mission, the Africa Inland Mission, and the United Methodist Church Mission, looking forward to the time when a United Church would be established, proposed a ‘Constitution of Alliance of Missionary Societies in British East Africa’. This set out a proposal for an alliance of mission societies which would result in mutual recognition of the work done by each, would regulate the relationships between the societies, would encourage work towards church union and the establishment of district and parochial councils and an overarching representative council, and which would recognise the status of converts within societies, for instance as catechumens or communicants. This constitution proposed limited eucharistic hospitality: ‘The responsible authorities of the Allied Missions will welcome as guests to their Communion any Communicant member of the Allied Missions for whom the ministrations of his own Church are for the time inaccessible, and to whose moral and spiritual fitness they are satisfied.’46 There was no discussion of pulpit exchange. The theological basis for the Alliance was defined: (a) The loyal acceptance of Holy Scripture as our supreme rule of Faith and Practice; and of the Apostles’ and Nicene Creeds as a general expression of fundamental Christian belief; and in the absolute authority of Holy Scripture as the Word of God; in the Deity of the Lord Jesus Christ; and in the atoning death of the Lord Jesus Christ as the ground of our forgiveness. (b) The regular administration of the two Sacraments, Baptism and the Lord’s Supper, by the outward signs as commanded by Christ.47 The first two clauses of paragraph (a) and paragraph (b) clearly drew on articles 1–3 of the Lambeth Quadrilateral; the second part of paragraph (a) offered a reading of the meaning of articles 1 and 2 which was consistent with evangelical theology. The proposals did not explicitly address the question of episcopacy, but stipulated that ‘each candidate for the Native ministry’ should be trained, subscribe to the theological basis of the Alliance and ‘be duly set apart by the lawful authority of the Church to which he belongs with laying on 46   Documents (1916–1920), p. 38. 47   Documents (1916–1920), p. 39; see also p. 41.

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of hands’.48 Despite the terms of the constitution, an appendix recognised that ‘full intercommunion … between Episcopal and Non-Episcopal churches is not yet possible.’49 The Anglican bishops ‘deeply regretted that it is impossible in the present circumstances to bid the members of their Church to seek the Holy Communion at the hands of ministers not episcopally ordained’, recognising that this stance condemned many Anglican converts to isolation.50 The Archbishop of Canterbury subsequently reiterated this position: it was possible for members of non-episcopal churches to be welcomed and to receive at Anglican eucharists if they were not able to attend a service of their own denomination, but it was not acceptable for Anglicans to take Communion from ministers not episcopally ordained. The Archbishop ‘deprecated … as giving rise to great misunderstanding’ the United Service of Holy Communion which had taken place at the 1913 Kikuyu conference.51 Non-episcopally ordained ministers might, however, be invited occasionally to preach in Anglican churches. The Constitution proposed at Kikuyu was responding, as were several of the English proposals discussed above, to the sense that the disunity of the church was complicating its mission and ministry, and lessening the impact of the gospel. The proposals as drawn up in 1918 recognised the challenge posed by church order, but sought to avoid the sensitive question of episcopacy by recognising the orders of the different mission societies. Limited mutual eucharistic hospitality was offered as a means of recognising and expressing the shared faith of the societies. This was congruent with proposals put forward by the Mansfield and Cheltenham conferences considered above, although Kikuyu was – in contrast to these English proposals – explicit about the need to address questions of church order. For the Anglo-Catholic Frank Weston, Bishop of Zanzibar from 1907, this rendered the Kikuyu proposals ineligible.52 He believed that any proposals must be ‘for a united church as distinct from … an alliance of missionary societies’ and that this must have as one of its foundational points ‘the acceptance of the fact that Episcopacy has always existed, and is to-day the possession of the far greater part of Christendom’. However, Weston was open to flexibility as to the shape of episcopacy: 48   Documents (1916–1920), p. 41. 49   Documents (1916–1920), p. 43. 50   Documents (1916–1920), p. 44. 51   Documents (1916–1920), p. 45. 52  Weston’s protest was published as The Case against Kikuyu: A Study in Vital Principles (London: Longmans. 1914); online at: http://anglicanhistory.org/weston/kikuyu1914.html (accessed 6 March 2016).

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Episcopacy need not involve us in a monarchical, diocesan episcopate. Many Bishops may serve one local Church. The Bishops should be freely elected, and should rule with the clergy and laity. Nor is it essential that we hold any one view of episcopacy on the doctrinal side, provided that the fact of its existence, and continuance, be admitted.53 Weston also wanted the doctrinal basis of union to be stronger: it should go beyond the acceptance of Scripture, the creeds and the two sacraments as affirmed by the first three articles of the Lambeth Quadrilateral, to acceptance of ‘the principle of Sacramental Grace’ and the possibility of the use of the other five sacraments, and ‘the principle of Church’s Discipline and Absolution’. An agreed form for baptism and the celebration of Holy Communion should be recognised throughout the united Church; otherwise the member bodies would ‘remain in full exercise of their own constitutions’ and would be ‘left entirely free’ to determine its mode of worship.54 Weston affirmed that ‘if the non-episcopal bodies would accept some such proposals as these, and consent to some Episcopal Consecration and ordination so as to enable them to minister, by invitation, in episcopal churches, … he would not refuse whatever the other bodies thought to be necessary to make his ministry among them acceptable.’55 6 Conclusion Given the terms of Article 4 of the Lambeth Quadrilateral, it is unsurprising that the question of church order – and in particular the role of the episcopate – emerged as a key theme in the ecumenical endeavours of Anglicans just after the First World War. The experience of war, of responding to social crisis, and of the mission field gave an urgency to the ecumenical project, and Anglicans took a variety of positions on what should be the consequences of this urgency. It is apparent that some Anglicans – particularly those of more evangelical churchmanship – were more prepared to enter into ecumenical relationships with non-episcopal churches than were those AngloCatholics for whom episcopacy was the sine qua non. Nonetheless, the documents collected by Bell suggest that not only English Anglicans, but also the PECUSA and Anglicans in South India accepted that agreement over church 53   Documents (1916–1920), p. 46. 54   Documents (1916–1920), pp. 46–7. 55   Documents (1916–1920), p. 47.

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order and episcopacy must be part of the way forward. The silence of the original Kikuyu proposals on questions of church order is therefore very much the exception, and puts it out of step with the agreements of its time. However, that the Anglican bishops concerned were aware that this was a major stumbling block is clear from the appendix. The proposals of both the 1913 and the 1919 Kikuyu conferences stood in continuity with other proposals in its use of the first three articles of the Lambeth Quadrilateral in defining its theological basis for agreement, although their theological statement went beyond that of the Quadrilateral. However, its proposals were also unusual in that they called for eucharistic hospitality without any mention of pulpit exchange. That these went together in the mind of the Archbishop of Canterbury is apparent from his response to the proposed Constitution. Characteristic of all the documents collected by Bell is the understanding that a reunited church would preserve difference not only in theology and practice, but also in terms of organisation. ‘Organic’ unity as we might now call it, was perceived to have a flexible shape, as yet, in these proposals, undefined. Kikuyu goes further than most in defining a vision of a united church; its lack of any agreement on the crucial question of episcopacy, however, meant that it was doomed to failure.

Chapter 7

‘The Assurance of Things Hoped for, the Conviction of Things Not Seen’: Bishop John Jamieson Willis and the Mission of the Church, 1910–1947 Jeremy Bonner A Bishop there was of Uganda Who, by practice unorthodox, fanned a Tremendous big flame Making Weston exclaim Haec haeresis est extirpanda!1

⸪ During the early 1950s, the Assistant Bishop of Leicester, John Jamieson Willis, began to set down an account of his life. Though he had served in Leicester since 1934, arguably the most significant years of his ministry had been spent in British East Africa, where he had for over twenty years led the Anglican Church of Uganda as its second bishop. In the course of his episcopate, Willis – like most missionary bishops – had been obliged formally to confront the question of Church order as it related to the singular circumstances of a missionary environment. In communities where African Anglicans found themselves with only a Baptist or Presbyterian mission from which to draw spiritual sustenance, questions of church membership and even sacramental efficacy loomed large, but to urge them to resort only to Anglican clergy risked denying the newly converted any spiritual ministrations at all. As Willis himself put it: We shrink from declaring that non-episcopal sacraments are ‘invalid,’ we prefer to say that they are ‘irregular.’ We dare not say that they are 1  Unknown Author, John J. Willis Papers, Lambeth Palace Library, MS 2305, f. 8.

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ineffective, we only say that their efficacy cannot be guaranteed. But in effect we tend to treat them as not only irregular but ineffective if we warn a convert that, in the circumstances above sketched, we tell him that it is better to go on for years without the Sacrament, than to receive it from one whose power to administer it cannot be guaranteed by us. It is a problem which no one living in our country is ever called upon to face.2 The contrast that Willis drew between ecclesial order in an established church and ecclesial flexibility in missionary settings is an important one both for contemporary missiologists and for scholars of Anglican identity. That Willis, early in his episcopate, had been drawn into one of the most heated Anglican doctrinal disputes of the early twentieth century on precisely this point serves as a reminder that questions of Anglican ‘tradition’ historically did not always pit Global South ‘conservatives’ against Global North ‘liberals’. Despite the openness of Willis to ecumenical interchanges, the course upon which the Church of Uganda ultimately embarked proved very different from the model embraced in, for example, the Church of South India. Rather than organic unity, African Christianity ultimately preserved the denominational identities of its various missionary parents, while embracing a measure of Christian unity through such trans-denominational phenomena as the East African Revival. By focusing on Willis – an Evangelical leader not previously biographed – this chapter assesses the contribution of Anglican missionaries to the failure to establish a single ‘Church of East Africa’, that embraced the majority of African Christians in the region. While much attention must be paid to the Kikuyu Controversy of 1913, this was but one incident in a much wider account of missiological and ecumenical discussion that extended from the ‘Scramble for Africa’ to the immediate aftermath of the Second World War. John Jamieson Willis was born into a middle-class family in Lewisham in 1872. As a child, he was wont to ‘preach’ to his siblings from the ‘pulpit’ of a large armchair and once prophetically informed his mother that when grown up he would be ‘useful to thousands because I will preach to them’. Such youthful piety gave way to adolescent rebellion at Haileybury (where teachers questioned whether he would be able to pursue a university career) and at Pembroke College, Cambridge, where it was initially suggested that he should pursue an ordinary degree rather than attempt the Tripos. Membership of the Cambridge Intercollegiate Christian Union may have helped to bring about a change of perspective, and Willis ultimately graduated at the head of the 2  ‘Memoirs and Thoughts of Bishop J. J. Willis of Uganda, 1950’, 185, CMS Unofficial Papers, XCMS/ACC120 F1, University of Birmingham.

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list. From Cambridge, he was ordained deacon in 1895 and priest the following year. He served five years as a curate in Great Yarmouth at one of the largest parish churches in England, which boasted no fewer than five daughter congregations.3 The siren call of the mission field continued to draw him, however, and in 1900 he accepted the call to Africa. ‘I am bound to say,’ he admitted to an aunt in 1898, ‘that it is not the attractiveness of missionary work which draws me forward … were it not for a deep conviction that this is the way that God is clearly leading, and that there is a great and crying need for “more labourers” in the vast harvest field.’4 By the turn of the century, missionary work in British East Africa had achieved a degree of maturity, but the Zanzibar-based Universities’ Mission to Central Africa (UMCA) was significantly removed – theologically and geographically – from the Church Missionary Society (CMS) stations in presentday Kenya and Uganda. As a CMS missionary, Willis was very conscious that many of the assumptions about interdenominational relationships that came naturally to Evangelical Anglicans were not shared by UMCA missionaries or by many of those in positions of authority within the Church of England. ‘In effect,’ he wrote, ‘two distinct churches, both claiming to be Anglican, were growing up side by side with one another, but each instilling and perpetuating its own tradition.’5 Missionary differences were the consequence of a fundamental ecclesiological divide. While UMCA vested authority in its missionary bishops, CMS affairs were overseen by a complex system of committees – domestic and foreign – which were ultimately responsible for the placement and support of missionary clergy. An Evangelical missionary bishop consequently shared responsibility for the non-native clergy ostensibly under his authority with a missionary board not all of whose members were necessarily in holy orders. The institutional life of CMS stations was further shaped by forces at work within English Evangelicalism, including the Keswick Convention, which was first convened in 1875, and the Student Christian Movement (though the latter encompassed a much broader theological spectrum by the early twentieth century). Both celebrated the devotional life and Christian service and – despite many Anglican participants – tended to downplay doctrinal disagreements within the Reformed Protestant family. As progenitors of 3  Memorandium (sic) of Francis Eliza Cobham, August 1955, Willis Papers, MS 2251, ff. 132–144; The Standard, 31 December 1913, Willis Papers, MS 2290, ff. 31–32; ‘Memoirs and Thoughts of Bishop J. J. Willis,’ pp. 2–3. 4  Copy of John Willis to Janet Sands, 26 October 1898, Willis Papers, MS 2249, f. 192. 5  ‘Memoirs and Thoughts of Bishop J. J. Willis,’ p. 191.

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many late nineteenth-century missionaries, they helped to promote an everincreasing cooperation between English-speaking Protestants in various colonial settings, including East Africa.6 Willis’ arrival in Uganda coincided with the division of the oversized Diocese of Eastern Equatorial Africa into the twin Dioceses of Uganda and Mombasa, for which William George Peel was consecrated bishop in 1899. The son of an Indian Army officer, Peel was educated at Islington College and ordained a priest in 1880. Returning to India, he served first as a teacher and later as secretary to the CMS missions in Madras and Bombay. In 1892 he organised a trans-denominational missionary congress where he delivered several inspirational addresses. ‘[Though] he had never been at the Keswick Convention’, a younger contemporary later recalled, ‘he had learned the spirit of the holy life which the best speakers there are wont to reveal.’7 The congress was also noteworthy for an attempt to offer, at the local CMS chapel, a eucharistic celebration open to all missionary delegates. When the Bishop of Bombay prohibited any such service, Peel honoured the decision and refused to attend the Holy Communion that was instead offered at the Presbyterian mission, demonstrating an Evangelical willingness to respect the authority of the local bishop.8 The new Diocese of Uganda remained under the authority of Alfred Tucker, who had served as Bishop of Eastern Equatorial Africa since 1890. Unlike Mombasa, where CMS competed with many other Protestant missions, the Church of England was the sole representative of Protestant Christianity in the region, a fact that would have long-term implications for the way in which missionary endeavours would be conducted. Willis was initially assigned to Ankole in southern Uganda before moving to Entebbe on Lake Victoria in 1902. In 1905 Bishop Tucker transferred him to Kavirondo in eastern Uganda from where he was subsequently elevated to the office of archdeacon. In this capacity Willis would continue to serve until he succeeded Tucker as bishop in 1912. It would prove a demanding ministry even for an active clergyman still in his thirties. One archidiaconal visitation, which included school inspections, teacher conferences and Confirmation services at eight different mission stations, covered 650 miles in 3½ weeks.9

6  One attendee at the Kikuyu Conference of 1913 reported that, in listening to the daily reflections of Charles Hurlburt of the Africa Inland Mission, ‘you could well imagine yourself to be in the Keswick Convention tent.’ George Grace, ‘United Missionary Conference,’ 2 July 1913, Willis Papers, MS 2288, ff. 1–2. 7  Eugene Stock, ‘Personal Tribute,’ Record, 20 April 1916, Willis Papers, MS 2301, ff. 60–61. 8  Eugene Stock, Indian Illustrations of Kikuyu Principles (1916), Willis Papers, MS 2302, ff. 1–10. 9  Willis Journal, 7 May 1912, MS 2247, ff. 14–15.

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East African Christianity in Context

Throughout his episcopate, Bishop Tucker laid great emphasis on the establishment of an autonomous Ugandan Church that, in the words of his successor, blended Anglican forms of government with the feudal model of the Kingdom of Uganda.10 English missionaries, in Tucker’s view, were not to act in isolation from the native church and in 1908 he went so far as to propose that the rights and privileges of membership in the Diocesan Synod should be extended to all missionaries whose ministry conformed to the discipline of the Church of Uganda and that the Central Council of the Church should be able to pursue the discipline of any missionary who failed so to conform with the authorities of the sponsoring society.11 Tucker also refused to delay the appointment of native ministers until such time as Africans had reached European levels of education. Native candidates for ordination, who were nominated by church councils, followed a course of instruction and parochial experience that qualified them successively as Teachers and Lay Readers before pursuing the Diaconate (a process which, it should be noted, could take up to 17 years).12 Not all missionary clergy were convinced of the wisdom of this approach. The Revd. F. Rowling argued in 1908 that many native clergy were presenting candidates for baptism and Confirmation with minimal preparation and that even supposedly Christian chiefs continued to lead immoral lives: It is certainly a difficulty to many missionary workers, that with standards for native workers of all grades so infinitely inferior to those for Europeans for all examinations, yet for charge of work afterwards both are supposed to on an equality! Were the standards the same in every case, then one might justly speak of a ‘racial’ distinction were the European always put in charge, but here apparently the very reverse is to be the case, i.e. the ‘racial distinction’ is to continue to be made (in practice) but always to operate in favour of the native; does that seem right?13 Church government would be a preoccupation for Willis, particularly after he became bishop. In 1910, he suffered defeat in the Diocesan Synod over a 10  ‘Memoirs and Thoughts of Bishop J. J. Willis’, pp. 94–96. Willis maintained that the Bishop occupied a role within the Church analogous to the Kabaka. 11  Alfred Tucker to A. F. Baylis, 7 January 1908, CMS Papers (Uganda), XCMS-B-OMS-A7-G3-O. 12  ‘Memoirs and Thoughts of Bishop J. J. Willis’, pp. 83–86. 13   The Revd. F. Rowling to A. F. Baylis, 28 February 1908, CMS Papers (Uganda), XCMS-B-OMS-A7-G3-O.

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proposal to arrange seating in church with communicants in front, baptised converts and catechumens behind them, and others (including the excommunicated) in the rear, as senior missionaries and older converts united in opposition (although they did agree that the names of all those condemned by church councils be read aloud in every church in the diocese).14 Even so, Willis viewed this freedom to dissent as a strength of the Church of Uganda that gave its decisions more binding force on its members.15 ‘The Church must be, not the Church of the Bishop, or the Church of the Europeans’, he told the Diocesan Synod shortly after his elevation to the episcopate, ‘but the Church of the Baganda, and if so they must feel it’.16 The rule of the majority was nevertheless constrained by the powers vested in the bishop by the Church Constitution. ‘Without Native Bishops,’ remarked one critic of Tucker’s plans for self-governance, ‘there cannot, strictly speaking, be a true Native Church’, his point being that no existing native clergyman was considered qualified to serve as a suffragan bishop.17 When representatives of the Diocesan Synod intimated in 1912 that as a constituted Church they deserved to be consulted about the appointment of a bishop to whose authority they would be subject, they were advised that this was not their concern and that to make formal representations to the Archbishop of Canterbury could well provoke a rebuff.18 The tension between gospel fundamentals and denominational adiaphora was one that generations of Anglican missionaries had struggled to resolve and it had peculiar resonance in a Ugandan setting, a point to which Willis later drew attention: There is a difficulty which, sooner or later, confronts every pioneer missionary – a conflict of loyalties between which it is never easy to decide. On the one hand he is the messenger and representative of some particular Church or denomination to which he owes allegiance, and is morally bound to pass on the truth as he himself received it. On the other hand, he is naturally and rightly concerned in laying the foundations of a native Church that is to be, not to confuse the native mind or needlessly

14  Alfred Tucker to A. F. Baylis, 18 July 1908, CMS Papers (Uganda), XCMS-B-OMS-A7-G3-O. 15  ‘Memoirs and Thoughts of Bishop J. J. Willis’, pp. 99–100. 16  ‘The Synod, 1912’, Willis Papers, MS 2287, ff. 15–17. 17   The Revd. F. Rowling to A. F. Baylis, 28 February 1908, CMS Papers (Uganda), XCMS-B-OMS-A7-G3-O. 18  Minute Number 14, Church of Uganda Diocesan Council, 20 January 1912, CMS Papers (Uganda), XCMS-B-OMS-A7-G3-O; A. F. Baylis to ‘Dear Brother’, 28 February 1912, CMS Papers (Uganda), XCMS-B-OMS-A7-G3-L3.

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transplant into virgin soil seeds of controversy which have often borne bitter fruit at home.19 One striking example of this conflict of loyalties can be found in the early decision of Bishop Tucker, taken in light of the general unavailability of bread and wine in late nineteenth-century Uganda, to authorize the use of plantains and banana juice as the ‘best possible’ eucharistic substitutes. Bread and wine were only gradually introduced into Ugandan churches after Willis became the bishop in 1912.20 Other efforts to Christianise local culture proved less enduring. While a missionary at Bairu, Willis endeavoured to persuade local women to abandon their veils at the time of baptism, but when he returned there to conduct Confirmations a decade later he found that most had resumed the veil. ‘Sooner, or later,’ he commented, ‘the customs will die out. The question is, how far was it wise to hasten the process?’21 Preparation for baptism remained a rigorous process, however, lasting at least six months and requiring study of the Gospels of Mark and Luke and part of the Catechism. All catechumens were required to be examined by the clergyman responsible for their district in the presence of their church council and two witnesses, and the names of those to be baptised were read publicly the previous day.22 Willis himself proved an able practitioner of the process of catechumenal instruction, which he clearly regarded as profoundly sacramental. In his journal he recorded the following description of new baptisms at Maseno: We have adopted the plan of a public admission to the Catechumenate, preceding by some considerable time the formal admission to the church by baptism. On the first occasion of such admission 17 boys confessed their faith in Christ. This was in May 1909. Fourteen of these were on January 30 1910 baptised, the other three being kept back for a time.23

19  John J. Willis, ‘The Kikuyu Conference, 1913’, in John J. Willis et al., Towards a United Church 1913–1947 (London, 1947), p. 20. 20  John Willis to Edwin Palmer, 24 February 1942, Edwin Palmer Papers, MS 2995, f. 273. Resolution 32 of the 1908 Lambeth Conference declared such measures to be acceptable only in cases of ‘absolute necessity’. See http://www.anglicancommunion.org/resources/ document-library/lambeth-conference/1908/resolution-32?language=English&tag=Lam beth+Conference. 21  ‘Memoirs and Thoughts of Bishop J. J. Willis’, p. 132. 22  ‘Memoirs and Thoughts of Bishop J. J. Willis’, pp. 78–79. 23  Willis Journal, 1 February 1910, Willis Papers, MS 2247, ff. 1–4.

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Nor was Willis dismissive of the Confirmation rite. Two years later, as the newly installed Bishop of Uganda, he held his first Confirmation service, at which fifteen boys were confirmed and then, together with the thirteen boys whom Bishop Tucker had confirmed shortly before his departure from Uganda, they all received the Holy Communion. ‘It was a memorable day,’ the new bishop commented in his journal.24 Photographs of episcopal visitations show Willis surrounded by African candidates for Confirmation, several of whom were older Christians, long baptised, ‘who have held back from the full benefits and privileges of the Church’ out of fear or for want of adequate instruction, but all of whom gave ‘a powerful testimony to the mighty force of the Gospel’.25 Even in this most Evangelical of dioceses, the discipline of Confirmation as a precondition for admission to the Holy Communion prevailed; baptism alone was inadequate. Critical to the success of missionary instruction in matters of faith was the availability of texts that were comprehensible to the new convert, yet the question of Bible translation itself proved a missiological minefield. East Africa produced many skilled translators – ordained and lay – many of whom had no formal training. Willis – whose efforts in this regard were limited to the translation of one Gospel into Maragoli and Luo – noted that while St. Bede only translated the Gospel of St. John six centuries after the arrival of Christianity in the British Isles, the lay missionary George Pilkington had translated the entire Bible into Luganda a mere six years after the arrival of Bishop Tucker in 1891.26 A very real tension existed, however, between those who favoured a European style of translation and those who, like Willis, were critical of ‘unconsciously Europeanized’ translations and preferred to rely on native translators whose work was then subject to missionary scrutiny.27 During the late 1900s, a battle raged within the Uganda Mission over the extent to which a native contribution would be permitted. In 1908 the Revd. F. Rowling – the same clergyman who had led opposition to Tucker’s plans for self-governance of the Ugandan Church – resigned from the local Translation Committee in protest at the reversal by the Executive Committee of his introduction of new letters and syllables into Luganda, on the grounds that they were a departure from the earlier phonetic system and an additional stumbling block to natives who could not pronounce them. Ironically, Rowling had seen his proposed changes

24  Willis Journal, 7 October 1912, Willis Papers, MS 2247, f. 16. 25  ‘A Welcome to the New Bishop of Uganda’, (April 1912), Willis Papers MS 2287, f. 8. 26  ‘Memoirs and Thoughts of Bishop J. J. Willis’, pp. 121–123. 27  John Willis, ‘A Native Translator’, Willis Papers, MS 2287, ff. 25–26.

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adopted with the support of African members of the committee.28 One observer suggested that, while Rowling subscribed to the ‘Imperial view’, under which a written language was intended to serve as wide a population as possible, the Translation Committee favoured the ‘Insular view’, that African words for foreign ideas and concepts should be determined on a case-by-case basis at the local level.29 Rowling blamed the growing ascendancy of the Insular view on the increased influence, in translation work, of the British and Foreign Bible Society which was calculated to ensure that ‘neither the native T[ranslation] C[ommittee] members nor the Diocesan Council will be allowed any active voice in their own language.’ The new proposals, he argued, ran counter to the Church Constitution’s refusal to make racial distinctions.30 The subsequently published rules for the BFBS-appointed Translation Committee required that two-thirds of the members be European (albeit on a temporary basis) and that a majority of the committee be empowered to appoint a ‘Sub-Committee of Europeans only’ to consider ‘points of theological difficulty’.31 Perhaps they had in mind such a case as John Willis had cause to lament the following year, where a native boy who had undertaken a superlative translation of the Gospel of St John from Swahili to Dholuo had ‘gone off the lines, and insists on teaching what is, virtually, Unitarianism denying the Deity of our Lord and advocating the return to polygamy, as in Old Testament days’.32 Translation was not the only battleground. Among younger missionaries a fascination with the fruits of Higher Criticism of the Bible came to colour even the teaching of adolescents. At the King’s School, Budo, the Revd Herbert Weatherhead found himself at the centre of a storm for teaching the boys ‘that the Old Testament was written to show that God unfolded religion gradually till the Saviour came’. A native clergyman who carried out an investigation reported that this had not been to suggest that the Old Testament was untrue or – as some of the wilder accusations had it – that there was no God, but urged the Europeans not to teach theological concepts that were still contested

28  The Revd. J. Roscoe to A. F. Baylis, 16 February 1908, CMS Papers (Uganda), XCMS-BOMS-A7-G3-O. 29  The Revd. R. H. Walker to A. F. Baylis, 20 May 1909, CMS Papers (Uganda), XCMS-BOMS-A7-G3-O. 30  The Revd. F. Rowling to A. F. Baylis, 31 December 1910, CMS Papers (Uganda), XCMS-BOMS-A7-G3-O. 31  ‘Resolutions adopted by Committee of Correspondence on March 7, 1911’, CMS Papers (Uganda), XCMS-B-OMS-A7-G3-L3. 32  Willis Journal, 16 November 1912, Willis Papers, MS 2247, ff. 25–26.

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at home to the Baganda ‘who are still children sucking milk’.33 Weatherhead’s most vocal critic was Charles Hattersley, a lay teacher at Mengo who announced his intention to resign in November 1911 over teaching practices at Budo and elsewhere.34 Invited to substantiate his charges, Hattersley submitted a letter in July 1912 that was nothing if not forthright: I consider that a dangerous spirit is influencing certain of the CMS men in Uganda … I contend that the teaching tends to create a feeling of suspicion that the Bible may only in part be the Word of God and part fables. I cannot believe that such teaching is in accordance with the spirit of the CMS as set forth in its Articles of Association … The King’s School at Budo, which takes most of the leading educated youths … is not helping in the least to form an educated Ministry. Rather it would seem that it is helping boys into secular pursuits and tends to make them sneer at the Native Ministry as being an inferior grade.35 Four months earlier, Weatherhead had defended his pedagogical approach to the CMS Group Committee, describing the Bible as ‘a living book not a depository of texts and the record of the gradual process of God’s revelation’. Although refraining from discussing the authorship of the Pentateuch, Whitehead conceded that he had conveyed the Higher Critical view that the Book of Jonah was probably written after the time of the prophet, although he emphasized that he had also told the boys that some Christians viewed it as history. ‘Although [African Christians] are nearer the OT saints in development,’ he concluded, ‘yet we cannot but wish to make them by God’s good grace New Testament Christians.’36 Bishop Willis, only a year into his episcopate, judged Weatherhead to be preoccupied with guarding against ‘unthinking acceptance of the Bible’, a very real concern when dealing with the Old Testament view of polygamy, and ‘progressive revelation’.37 The Group Committee, however, warned against casting doubt upon the divine authority and historical charac33  H. W. D. Kitakule to Archdeacon Walker, 1 January 1912 and 20 January 1912, CMS Papers (Uganda), XCMS-B-OMS-A7-G3-O. 34  G. T. Manley to Bishop Willis, 18 October 1912, CMS Papers (Uganda), XCMS-B-OMSA7-G3-L3. 35  Charles W. Hattersley to the Group Committee 18 July 1912, CMS Papers (Uganda), XCMSB-OMS-A7-G3-L3. 36  ‘Statement for Private Conference at Namiremebe’, 25 March 1912, CMS Papers (Uganda), XCMS-B-OMS-A7-G3-O. 37  Bishop Willis to G. T. Manley, 7 December 1912, CMS Papers (Uganda), XCMS-BOMS-A7-G3-O.

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ter of the Old Testament. ‘The Committee would not for a moment wish any of their Missionaries to teach anything contrary to their own personal belief’, its convenor told Weatherhead, ‘but they thought that silence upon some of these matters might be wiser, in view of the infant nature of the Uganda Church.’38 It is instructive to note that, when the Kikuyu Controversy erupted two years later, the principal targets of Frank Weston’s Ecclesia Anglicana: For What Does She Stand? were the Modernist contributors to the volume Foundations, whom he dubbed not ‘Christian in the accepted sense of the word’, but as exponents of ‘a new religion’. For Weston, the Kikuyu compact, with its implicit eschewal of Confirmation, episcopacy and infant baptism as essential marks of the Church catholic and universal, was a logical consequence of Modernist innovation,39 though such concerns were far from being confined to AngloCatholics. The spectre of the advance of Modernist theology in the mission field ultimately communicated itself to the Evangelical grass roots, with one clerical sponsor withdrawing funds from a female teacher in Ndeje in 1918 out of a fear that she was promoting ‘Higher Critical Teaching’,40 and four years later Daniel Bartlett would head the secession of missionaries that would coalesce into the Bible Churchmen’s Missionary Society.41 Such internal controversies inevitably coloured the debate over missionary comity that began in the closing decades of the nineteenth century. In 1908 the Lambeth Conference – the decennial gathering of Anglican bishops from across the world – commended proposals for ‘correlation and co-operation between missions of the Anglican Communion and those of other Christian bodies.’42 Two years later, the World Missionary Conference in Edinburgh, whose principal organisers included the American John Mott of the World Student Christian Federation and Joseph Oldham of the British Student Christian Movement, brought together numerous Protestant missionary 38  G. T. Manley to the Revd. H. T. C. Weatherhead, 30 January 1911, CMS Papers (Uganda), XCMS-B-OMS-A7-G3-L3. 39   Ecclesia Anglicana: For What Does She Stand? An Open Letter to the Right Reverend Father in God, Edgar, Lord Bishop of St. Albans, by Frank, Bishop of Zanzibar, 11 October 1913 (London: Longman, Green and Co., 1914), pp. 19–20. 40  G. T. Manley to Miss M. A. Taylor, 8 April 1918, CMS Papers (Uganda), XCMS-B-OMSA7-G3-L3. 41  David Bebbington, ‘Missionary Controversy and the Polarising Tendency in TwentiethCentury British Protestantism’, Anvil 13:2 (1996): pp. 141–157. The Bible Churchmen’s Missionary Society initially committed to serving in areas where CMS was not already established and did not send missionaries to Kenya until 1929. 42  Resolutions at: http://www.anglicancommunion.org/resources/document-library/lam beth-conference/1908/resolution-23.aspx?author=Lambeth+Conference&year=1908 (accessed 8 August 2016).

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societies under the slogan, ‘Evangelization of the World in This Generation’.43 Though Edinburgh produced no great breakthrough, it attested to the enthusiasm with which Protestant missionary organizations viewed their joint efforts across the world and a concern that the duplication of missionary work served only to dissipate energy and to introduce sectarian distinctions that had no place in a largely pagan world. For Anglican Evangelicals, the World Missionary Conference was a time of triumph. At the same time, the appointment of Edward Talbot (Bishop of Southwark and subsequently Bishop of Winchester), a pronounced high churchman to whom any interdenominational activities were inherently suspect, to the Continuation Committee of the Conference signified the continued marginalization of the Evangelical contribution to the development of Anglican theology and ecclesiology. This was all the more frustrating given the very clear edge enjoyed by Evangelicals when it came to supporting foreign missions. In a pointed letter to the Church Times a Birmingham layman lamented that a 1913 CMS drive for missionary funds had raised £100,000 in five months, at the same time as a ‘challenge’ for £20,000 by the high church Society for the Propagation of the Gospel had so far raised only £6,800. ‘It is a comfortable policy’, he concluded, ‘to complain with anger that the men we don’t send out, who are paid by the money we don’t subscribe, do the thing we don’t like; but it is not very heroic, nor is it businesslike.’44 2

Towards a United Church of East Africa?

It is hardly surprising that Anglican Evangelicals increasingly sought to cooperate with like-minded Protestant missionaries. While Anglicans constituted the sole Protestant presence in Uganda, Presbyterians and Methodists rubbed shoulders with Quakers and Seventh Day Adventists in neighbouring Mombasa. The most obvious partners for cooperation in East Africa, however, were the Church of Scotland and the nondenominational Africa Inland Mission (AIM), although Frederick Baylis, Secretary to the Africa Committee of CMS, confessed to Bishop Peel that while he welcomed interdenominational cooperation in East Africa, he felt that it was likely to yield ‘quite a limited field for the Anglican Communion’, compared with India and China.45 43  The phrase was identical to the title of a book published by Mott in 1900 (New York, Student Volunteer Movement for Foreign Missions, 1900). 44  Letter of E. Priestly Swain, Church Times, 9 January 1914, Willis Papers, MS 2290, f. 193. 45  F. Baylis to Bishop Peel, 7 December 1908, CMS Papers (Kenya), XCMS-B-OMS-A5-G3-L10.

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As the number of regions without a Christian presence inexorably shrank, turf wars necessarily erupted over the question of which missionary society had first established itself in the area. Representative of this conflict was an exchange of letters between Dr Henry Scott of the Church of Scotland Mission at Kikuyu and the Revd Harry Leakey of CMS. Although the Presbyterians had been longer established in the area, Leakey argued that CMS had original possession and that more recent investments in a CMS station made it too costly for the society simply to abandon it. Scott, a veteran medical missionary, maintained that the presence of two missions in the same area was not only a duplication of effort but ran the risk of precipitating interdenominational conflict.46 Conflict was not always a given. A 1910 letter to Secretary Baylis reported that most missionaries were of the opinion that the transfer of Kisii to CMS should not proceed if the Seventh Day Adventists were already established, an unusually generous interpretation of missionary comity.47 Particularly good relations existed with the Africa Inland Mission and its leader Charles Hurlburt. Bishop Tucker agreed to the transfer of Usukuma from CMS to AIM in 1909 on the understanding that missionaries be deployed immediately, while Hurlburt encouraged the inclusion of Anglican missionaries in an AIM mission to the Azande in 1912, an approach with parallels to the Anglican section of the China Inland Mission led by William Cassels, Bishop of Western China.48 Such understandings, while welcome, fell short of the entire scope of Resolution 76 of the Lambeth Conference of 1908 which declared that ‘every opportunity should be welcomed of co-operation between members of different Communions in all matters pertaining to the social and moral welfare of the people.’49 As early as 1908 Bishop Peel reported that he had been in discussions with the Church of Scotland to erect a ‘joint church’ in Nairobi,50 the same year that the first of five local church conferences on the subject of church federation took place.51 The following year Nairobi hosted a four-day conference at which Archdeacon Willis spoke on ‘The desirability of a common 46  Dr Henry Scott to the Revd. Harry Leakey, 30 October 1910, Leakey to Scott, 2 November 1910, Scott to Leakey, 21 December 1910, CMS Papers (Kenya), XCMS-B-OMS-A5-G3-O. 47  The Revd R. H. Walker to F. Baylis, 14 December 1910, CMS Papers (Uganda), XCMS-BOMS-A7-G3-O. 48  Charles E. Hurlburt to the Rev. J. Stuart Holden, 9 March 1909, Memorandum of an interview with Mr. C. E. Hurlburt on October 30, 1912, CMS Papers (Uganda), XCMS-BOMS-A7-G3-O. 49  Resolutions at: http://www.anglicancommunion.org/resources/document-library/lam beth-conference/1908/resolution-76.aspx?author=Lambeth+Conference&year=1908. 50  Bishop Peel to F. Baylis, 3 October 1908, CMS Papers (Kenya), XCMS-B-OMS-A5-G3-O. 51  ‘Memoirs and Thoughts of Bishop J. J. Willis’, 177A-177. Prior to Kikuyu (1913) the meetings were held at Nairobi (1911 and 1909) and Maseno (1909 and 1908).

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Native Church’. It was perhaps the first opportunity to set forth an Anglican ecumenical vision for East Africa and Willis made full use of the Lambeth Quadrilateral and pronouncements of successive Lambeth Conferences, but his argument hinged upon the model of the ‘church of Apostolic days’. The future bishop went on: ‘The central authority existed and was all but universally recognised and accepted but its existence was felt to be consistent with a remarkable degree of local liberty. If we are ever to have in British East Africa a common native church it will be on similar lines.’ Such unity would present a clear conception of Christianity to the native mind, ensure common funding for religious schools and colleges, and promote common forms of service, but it would not come without cost: ‘Unity will only be secured at the cost of a certain amount of personal independence. I speak to myself as much as to anyone else here, when I say that one of the great weaknesses of our Protestant missionary effort is the almost entire absence of effective discipline. There is probably no body of men more independent than we are.’52 In November 1909 Willis participated in a meeting to discuss ‘plans of possible union’ with representatives of the Church of Scotland, AIM and the Society of Friends. While concluding that formal union was not an immediate possibility, they agreed that ‘federation to bring missionary methods in [British East Africa] more in line’ was possible. While CMS was committed to development on denominational lines, Willis argued that the local Church had everything to gain from pursuing as much uniformity as possible in such areas as forms of service, conditions of church membership and education.53 The following year, the CMS General Committee declared its approval for any attempts to foster greater Christian unity and cooperation that met with the approval of the Bishops of Uganda and Mombasa, but it also warned that CMS involvement in any missionary federation was contingent on the preservation of independent management and the liberty of members to withdraw.54 By the summer of 1913 leaders of the major missionary groups in East Africa – the Church Missionary Society, the Church of Scotland and the Africa Inland Mission – were poised to take the next step. From June 17 to June 21, they gathered at the Church of Scotland mission in Kikuyu to devise a model of 52   Report of the United Missionary Conference held at Nairobi, June 7–June 11, 1909, pp. 14–28 (quotes on pp. 22 and 27), CMS Papers (Kenya), XCMS-B-OMS-A5-G3-O. 53  John Willis to A. F. Baylis, 14 November 1909, CMS Papers (Uganda), XCMS-B-OMS-A7G3-O. 54  Resolution Adopted by the Committee of Correspondence on November 1, 1910 and confirmed by General Committee on November 8, 1910, CMS Papers (Kenya), XCMS-BOMS-A5-G3-L10.

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federation that secured entire mission districts to individual denominations and erected a supervisory framework surmounted by a representative council of all the federated missions. Although the new arrangement had more significance for the Diocese of Mombasa, the ailing Bishop Peel (who was to die in 1916) declined to serve as conference chairman, leading the delegates to turn to the new Bishop of Uganda. ‘We must bear in mind’, wrote Willis at the time, ‘that the purpose of missionary work is not to perpetuate in every detail our European ideals, but to form a church that will be as truly indigenous to Africa as our own is to England.’ His principal concern was for the new African Christian who, by moving from one district to another, might find himself or herself in an alien landscape. The use of a common language of instruction in all church schools, the adoption of common policies on native customs and marriage and the common recognition of ecclesiastical discipline imposed by each denomination on its members would all reduce that sense of alienation.55 Had the proposals gone no further they would have been uncontroversial, but questions of doctrine could not be indefinitely postponed. Seeking a basic definition of belief, delegates agreed that the federation was to be based upon the Holy Scriptures as the ‘supreme rule of Faith and practice’ and on the Apostles’ and Nicene Creeds as ‘a general expression of fundamental Christian belief’ and they acknowledged both the deity of Jesus Christ and the ‘atoning death of our Lord as the ground of our forgiveness’. African converts were to have membership in the church of the district in which they resided, subject only to their standing in the church in which they had been baptised. A Presbyterian in good standing who had not been episcopally confirmed would therefore be eligible to participate in the Holy Communion at an Anglican altar if she settled in an Anglican missionary district. Finally, the federation called for the setting apart of all ministers by ‘lawful authority’ employing the laying on of hands, the regular administration of the two Sacraments by outward signs, and a commitment by all denominations – while not forsaking their own liturgies – to begin to employ certain common forms of worship that would be easily comprehensible. At the request of CMS it was agreed that individual denominations were in no way constrained in their doctrinal instruction and that no minister invited to a different mission might administer or assist with the sacraments. Interestingly, the definition of baptism that was adopted was rejected by two of the groups present – the Quakers because they repudiated the notion of a sacrament by 55  John Willis, ‘Federation of Missions in British East Africa’ (n.d.), Willis Papers, MS 2286, f. 35.

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outward signs and the Baptists because infant baptism was accepted as valid – and the final agreement was signed by representatives of the CMS, the Church of Scotland, the Methodist Church and the Africa Inland Mission.56 In a dramatic move, Bishop Peel then concluded proceedings with a celebration of the Holy Communion in the Presbyterian mission church building that was open to all those missionaries present who wished to receive. From a simple exercise in missionary cooperation, the Kikuyu Conference thus became a witness to altar fellowship. ‘The Holy Communion, administered by the Bishop of Mombasa on the last day of the conference,’ wrote Bishop Willis, ‘set its seal upon a time of which we can only say that it was good for us to be there.’57 In the ensuing theological fire-storm, Bishop Peel was clear that he did not consider his actions unprecedented: As to admitting to ‘Communion.’ The rubric makes no pronouncement anent any outside the Church of England flock. The rule is made to govern the flock of the Ch. of England. In India ‘High’ Bishops and clergy, to my knowledge, extend the hospitality of our Church to persons outside our Communion (‘noncoms’) also at Keswick, every year what numbers are admitted at St. John’s. I have always in India, my Bishop being aware, ‘admitted’ suitable persons who are not Ch. of England and have not been rebuked.58 3

The Response to Kikuyu, 1913–1915

Beyond East Africa, ample precedents existed for the arrangements enjoined at Kikuyu. At the 1912 Indian National Conference of Missions, Anglicans, Baptists, Congregationalists, Lutherans, Methodists and Quakers all agreed to organise a National Missionary Council, promoted the notion of ‘spiritual hospitality’ for those deprived of the ministrations of their own communion, urged missionaries to meet for common prayer and counsel, and sought to foster cooperation in education, medical care and the distribution of Christian

56  George Grace, ‘United Missionary Conference’, 2 July 1913, Willis Papers, MS 2288, ff.1–2; K. St. Aubyn Rogers to G. T. Manley, 4 November 1914, CMS Papers (Kenya), XCMS-BOMS-A5-G3-O. 57  John Willis, ‘Federation of Missions in British East Africa’ (n.d.), Willis Papers, MS 2286, f. 35. 58  Bishop Peel to the Revd. B. G. O’Rorke, 11 October, 1913, CMS Papers (General Secretary), XCMS-G-Y-AFE-1.

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literature.59 This development was only enhanced by the consecration of V. S. Azariah as the first Indian bishop of the Anglican Communion for the newly established Diocese of Dornakal in a ceremony attended by Indians representing many Christian traditions, which Eugene Stock later described as ‘an anticipation of the Kikuyu Communion Service, only on a much grander scale’. The following year, an Anglican Church Conference declared the Church of India to be not a part of the Church of England but ‘the Church of India in communion with the Church of England’. The conference proposed a vision of a national church free to develop on its own lines, in which Indians would gradually assume positions of leadership and recommended agreements among missionary societies to allocate territory, common standards for dealing with Christians under church discipline and a conception of spiritual hospitality that largely anticipated the Kikuyu compact.60 As news of the Conference – and Peel’s eucharistic celebration – was relayed to England, however, it became clear that Anglo-Catholics did not share the Bishop of Mombasa’s assurance of the propriety of the Kikuyu proceedings. When an appreciative account appeared in the Scotsman Bishop Talbot of Winchester condemned its celebration of ‘all these proceedings as being the outcome & fulfilment of what was done at Edinburgh, whereas, of course, whatever else is true or not, such proceedings were entirely outside of and against Edinburgh’.61 Less than a week later, the Church Times, the organ of high churchmen, unleashed a broadside against those ‘jerrybuilders’ who were willing to employ a ‘jumble of heterogeneous dogmas, beliefs, opinions, platitudes, and conjectures’ as the material basis for the new church and it took particular delight in lambasting the provision for pulpit fellowship. ‘Here is the means whereby a native may best be helped to clear and definite comprehension of the Church’s creed,’ concluded the editor sarcastically; ‘that he should be addressed in turn from the pulpit of the church he attends by a Presbyterian, a Lutheran, a Seventh-Day Adventist and a Quaker!’62 Only in October 1913 did such criticisms take concrete form when the Bishop of Zanzibar, Frank Weston, published Ecclesia Anglicana: For What Does She Stand?, an episcopal encyclical which, though principally an indictment of Anglican Modernism, also repudiated the Kikuyu compact for 59   Westminster Gazette, 29 December 1913, Willis Papers, MS 2289, ff. 185–189. 60  Eugene Stock, ‘Indian Illustrations of Kikuyu Principles’, 1916, Willis Papers MS 2302, ff. 1–10. 61  Bishop of Winchester to Cyril Bardsley, 16 August 1913, CMS Papers (General Secretary), XCMS-G-Y-AFE-1. Talbot may have been unduly incensed that the article heaped scorned on the Universities Mission to Central Africa. 62   Church Times, 22 August 1913, Willis Papers, MS 2286, f. 36.

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its abandonment of Confirmation and episcopacy as essential marks of the Church catholic and universal, and therefore a betrayal of Anglican essentials.63 While Weston took the position that it fell to the Archbishop of Canterbury to discipline Bishops Peel and Willis, the Church Times offered the interesting theory that Weston (and his East African counterparts) were actually autocephalous bishops for whom the Archbishop of Canterbury did not serve as metropolitan and that, consequently, Weston should have excommunicated Willis and Peel on his own recognisance and then informed the neighbouring metropolitans, who could either have endorsed or repudiated his action.64 It doubtless came as little surprise to Weston that one of the first responses to his encyclical came from Dean Hensley Henson of Durham, once a fervent Evangelical but by 1913 no longer considered to be of their party. ‘An Anglican Bishop’, insisted Henson of Peel’s actions at Kikuyu, ‘did frankly and fully acknowledge fraternity with the representatives of non-Episcopal churches in the only way such acknowledgment can formally be made – by receiving Holy Communion with them on the basis of an absolute religious equality.’ Henson added that in his view the Edinburgh Missionary Conference should have made participation contingent upon an acceptance of the principle of intercommunion and he denounced what he called ‘exclusive Anglicanism, which is the categorical contradiction of Evangelical Christianity’.65 Henson was soon joined in his defence of the Kikuyu bishops by Handley Moule, Bishop of Durham and long-time Keswick Convention speaker. Moule appealed to the legacy of such Anglican divines as Archbishop Richard Bancroft of Canterbury who had ordained the first bishops for the Church of Scotland; Archbishop James Ussher of Armagh who, Moule insisted, had treated the French Protestant Huguenots as part of the Church universal; and Bishop John Cosin of Durham who had acknowledged as orthodox both ‘Protestants and the best Reformed Churches’. Were Weston’s charges to be sustained, Moule concluded, it would commit the Church of England to a position never before 63   Ecclesia Anglican: For What Does She Stand? An Open Letter to the Right Reverend Father in God, Edgar, Lord Bishop of St. Albans, by Frank, Bishop of Zanzibar, 11 October 1913, http:// anglicanhistory.org/weston/ecclesia_anglicana.html. 64   Church Times, 5 December 1913, Willis Papers, MS 2288, ff. 49–53. 65  Hensley Henson, ‘Quo Tendimus?’, Record, 21 November 1913, Willis Papers, MS 2288, ff. 13–17. ‘[It] does strike me as a piece of effrontery’, wrote one Evangelical clergyman, ‘that the Dean should pose as the champion of the Church of England as an “Evangelical or Reformed Church.” If there was one thing the Reformers stood for it was the inspiration and authenticity of Holy Scripture. This the Dean long ago threw upon the scrapheap, and I fancy the Reformers would find more in common with the most advanced Sacerdotalist than with him.’ Letter of W. Hawksley Westall, prob. Guardian, 28 November, 1913, Willis Papers, MS 2288, f. 23.

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affirmed authoritatively, namely ‘that Divine grace runs only, for certain, in the episcopal channel; that all other ministries, as not irregular only but invalid, are to be shunned in the name of spiritual truth.’66 For most Anglo-Catholics the historical debate about what seventeenthcentury churchmen might or might not have believed was not relevant to the existing state of the Church of England. The movement’s most prominent spokesman, Charles Gore, Bishop of Oxford, warned that ‘such an open Communion [as occurred at Kikuyu] seems to involve principles so totally subversive of Catholic order and doctrine as to be strictly intolerable, in the sense that they could not continue in a fellowship which required them to tolerate the recurrence of such incidents.’67 Gore’s arguments were reinforced by Alfred Rawlinson (a future Bishop of Derby), who noted that Nonconformist clergy (unlike their Greek Catholic and Roman Catholic counterparts) were re-ordained upon entering the Church of England, a practice that necessarily implied a defect in their clerical orders.68 The ailing Bishop Peel took considerable umbrage both at Weston’s charges and the ensuing high church response: Bishop Weston has set forth views, and demands for their acceptance, to Bishop Willis and myself which are ‘impossible’ to me who am a Bishop of the ‘Reformed’ Church of England … Bishop Willis and I are one in view. I go with all his statements. As to the charge of ‘heresy’ I really cannot take it seriously, seeing that heresy as he would charge me with, and Bishop Willis with, would involve the whole ‘Reformed’ Church of England position.69 It fell to the younger Willis to return to England to testify before the Lambeth Consultative Body, which had been constituted by the Lambeth Conference of 1897 and consolidated by the Lambeth Conference of 1908. En route, Willis stopped in Zanzibar to meet with his nemesis Frank Weston. To his surprise, Willis ‘came to realize the deep spirituality behind the ecclesiastical rigidity’ and the two bishops prayed together.70 England proved a far greater ordeal, where the early months of 1914 ‘were as interesting as they were hectic’, with 66  Letter of Handley Moule, Times, 13 December 1913, Willis Papers, MS 2288, f. 159. 67  Letter of Charles Gore, Times, 29 December 1913, Willis Papers, MS 2289, f. 105. 68  Letter of Alfred Rawlinson, Times, 1 January 1914, Willis Papers, MS 2290, ff. 31–32. 69  Bishop Peel to G. T. Manley, 22 January 1914, CMS Papers (Uganda), XCMS-B-OMS-A5-G3-O. 70  ‘Memoirs and Thoughts of Bishop J. J. Willis’, p. 178. ‘The Bishop hopes to leave for England at the end of this week and should be with you about 22nd inst. He is going to Zanzibar to see Bishop Weston who seems much grieved over the confederation of churches in East

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almost daily meetings with Archbishop Randall Davidson and discussions with church leaders from across the theological divide, including a three-hour session before the Consultative Body, chaired by Archbishop Lang of York.71 Amidst all the wrangling over the relationship between the Church of England and the churches of the wider Protestant family, however, both the missionary societies and the missionary bishops continued to emphasize the singular nature of the colonial setting. ‘Unless he is of quite exceptional spiritual fibre,’ wrote Willis of the Anglican convert who found himself under the jurisdiction of another mission, ‘and sustained by a really deep conviction, the tendency will be to drift, and if not to drift, then to ally himself with and join the denomination among which he finds himself.’72 In a letter to the Evangelical newspaper, the Record, in December 1913 Willis stressed that the fact that native Anglicans temporarily moved into a Presbyterian or Methodist district did not mean that Anglican bishops thereby surrendered responsibility for their spiritual well-being. ‘We do not recognise in the convert from another Mission a member of our own Anglican communion, which he is not,’ he wrote, ‘but we do recognise him, in virtue of his baptism and his character, as a member of that Holy Catholic Church of Christ, which is greater far than all our limited conception of it, and, as such, we welcome him among us.’73 At least one Uganda missionary agreed with Willis that denial of Holy Communion to an African Christian simply because he might be a Presbyterian would raise ‘all the rancour of sectarian jealousy’ and drive him into the arms of his Muslim countrymen. ‘I am first of all a priest in the Church of God’, he concluded, ‘and I give this truly Catholic child of God the food which he craves.’74 A subsequent CMS memorandum on missionary federation discussed the hypothetical case of an African member of the Church of Scotland residing within the jurisdiction of CMS. Such an individual would be received as a ‘guest’ at a Communion Service, but should he wish to join the Church of England ‘it would still be an open question as what conditions, if any, he would have to satisfy before he could rightly be regarded as a Communicant member of the Church of England.’75 In November 1915, when Archbishop Davidson

Africa. He has probably not heard all that there is to say on the matter.’ The Revd. E. Millar to the Revd. G. T. Manley, 13 October 1913, CMS Papers (Uganda), XCMS-B-OMS-A7-G3-O. 71  ‘Memoirs and Thoughts of Bishop J. J. Willis’, pp. 179–180. 72  ‘Memoirs and Thoughts of Bishop J. J. Willis’, p. 184. 73  Letter of John Willis, Record, 5 December 1913, Willis Papers, MS 2288, ff. 71–91. 74  Letter of W. Chadwick, Times, 3 January 1914, Willis Papers, MS 2290, ff. 155–157. 75  ‘Proposed Scheme of Federation of Mission in British East Africa: Supplementary Recommendations’, 12 March 1914, CMS Papers (Uganda), XCMS-B-OMS-A7-G3-L3.

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conceded to colonial bishops the authority to act on their own discretion, an Evangelical spokesman expressed his satisfaction: In throwing open our Communion in the foreign field to native converts separated from their own churches, His Grace is not doing merely the charitable thing, but that which Scripture in principle enjoins. These native converts are baptized, that is beyond dispute; for even assuming that the ministry which led them to Christ is ‘invalid,’ their baptism is not impaired, for antiquity pronounces that even a layman can baptize. Nor can the exclusivists resort to the argument that schism has separated them from Communion, for no one will seriously maintain that a heathen African converted to Christianity by a Presbyterian is a schismatic from the Church of England.76 4

The Retreat from Comity, 1920–1948

With the conclusion of the First World War, all ecclesiastical truces expired. An earnest of the new realities came in January 1919 when Frank Weston exhorted his brother bishops that ‘the sooner we escape from the growing liberalism of the English Church the better for our African people.’77 Weston proposed the immediate establishment of an East African province that would ‘recognize existing diocesan uses, service-books, rules, regulations and traditions, except in as far as they may be contrary to the faith and practice of Christ’s Church … [and] encourage national and tribal development, while upholding just so much uniformity as is necessary to common participation in essential ministerial acts’.78 George Baskerville, Archdeacon to the Bishop of Uganda, wrote caustically to his diocesan that just as Weston viewed the churchmanship of CMS as ‘defective’, so did Willis consider that of UMCA to be ‘medieval, superstitious and not primitive’. Let Weston organize a province if he so desired, Baskerville concluded, but let Uganda and Mombasa ‘look elsewhere for 76  H. A. Wilson, ‘Kikuyu and Nonconformity: A Paper read at St. Albans Clerical and Lay Union on November 9, 1915’, Willis Papers, MS 2301, ff. 32–37. 77  Bishop Weston to ‘My Dear Brother,’ 14 January 1919, Archives of the Bishop of Uganda, Record Group No. 1, Uganda Christian University Library Archives Section (hereafter ABU), Box 67, f.509. Martha Smalley kindly provided online access to this collection through Yale Divinity School Library. 78  Scheme for an East Central African Province (n.d.), ABU, Box 67, f.509. In a footnote to Article VII, Weston argued that such an arrangement would allow for ‘re-union with bodies that will never accept our modes of worship’.

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their provincial compeers’.79 Willis and the new Bishop of Mombasa, Richard Heywood, proved more accommodating, however, and expressed their support to Weston, while recommending that any disputes be appealed not to the bishops of the Province of South Africa (as Weston had proposed) but to the Central Consultative Committee of the Lambeth Conference. They also noted that ‘contrary to the faith and practice of Christ’s Church’ was too vague a constraint on liturgical diversity and that the proposed provincial constitution’s commitment to diocesan autonomy was overly restrictive of central authority.80 That ecumenism had given way to more pressing Anglican ecclesiological concerns may have reflected in part the doubts of many missionaries as to whether the nuances of the Kikuyu debate had much meaning for the majority of East African Anglicans. ‘If the matter of [federation] were brought before the Synod at the present time’, wrote one observer in August 1914, it would only mean endless talk & explanations & misunderstandings. The majority of the Baganda do not know what a dissenter is, & cannot understand a non-Episcopal church, & so are not capable to taking in all the Kikuyu proposals without long and elaborate explanations for which the time has not yet come.’81 Such sentiments may well have shaped the approach adopted by the Lambeth Conference of 1920 towards the question of Christian unity, in which the centrality of Anglicanism to the ecumenical vision was emphasized. In a Conference sermon, Bishop Willis sought to emphasize the authenticity of the Anglicanism over which he presided: The Native Anglican Church in Uganda bears very manifest traces of a strict fidelity to the original of which it is a translation … Its Bishops have derived their authority from, and owe their allegiance to, the Archbishop of Canterbury. Its liturgy is the Book of Common Prayer. Its clergy are ordained in accordance with the Anglican rites. Its organizations [sic] into parishes and rural deaneries, with Church Councils and Diocesan Synod, follows the familiar lines of home organizations. It is, in all respects, an integral part of the Anglican Communion.82

79  The Revd. G. K. Baskerville to Bishop Willis, 7 February 1919, ABU, Box 67, f.509. 80  Bishop Willis to Bishop Weston, 21 February 1919, ABU, Box 67, f509. 81  The Revd. E. Millar to the Revd. G. T. Manley, 24 August 1914, CMS Papers (Uganda), XCMS-B-OMS-A7-G3-O. 82  Willis, ‘African Child Races’, Ramsden Sermon, 23 May 1920, Willis Papers, MS 2250, ff. 134–141.

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With his brother bishops, Willis endorsed the ‘Appeal to All Christian People’ on church reunion, with its renewed stress on the necessity of ‘a ministry acknowledged by every part of the Church as possessing not only the inward call of the Spirit, but also the commission of Christ and the authority of the whole body … [for which] considerations alike of history and of present experience justify the claim which we make on behalf of the episcopate’. This, the bishops of the Anglican Communion contended, would be ‘the best instrument for maintaining the unity and continuity of the Church’.83 The reaffirmation of the fourth point of the Lambeth Quadrilateral demonstrated once again the limited ability of Anglicans to engage with the wider ecumenical movement. Willis’ new commitment to episcopacy may well have stemmed from his post-Kikuyu experience of ecclesiastical self-government and his willingness to assert the authority of the bishop-in-see. At a stormy meeting of the Diocesan Synod in 1915 he had deplored the idea prevailing in certain districts overseen by native-born clergy that the Synod was supreme. ‘[If] the Synod is to have the last word in everything,’ he complained, ‘Episcopal govt. becomes a farce.’ By the close of the session he had wrung from delegates the concession that while the Synod adopted legislation it neither oversaw its administration nor established regulations.84 For one who frequently berated his UMCA counterparts for ‘autocratic’ rule, Willis proved surprisingly jealous of his own prerogatives. In 1917 he even secured the authority to appoint canons to his cathedral chapter and an episcopal right to preach with notice, a stark contrast with the Church of England, where a bishop required permission from the chapter to preach in his own cathedral.85 Though preoccupied with Christian reunion, the Lambeth Conference also devoted time to the question of provincial organization, deploring the persistence of isolated missionary dioceses and urging their speedy organization into provinces. ‘The fact that dioceses proposing to form a province owe their origin to missions of different branches of the Anglican Communion need be no bar to such action,’ the bishops concluded.86 On his return from the Conference, however, Willis found sentiment within the Church of Uganda to 83  Resolutions at: http://www.anglicancommunion.org/resources/document-library/lam beth-conference/1920/resolution-9-reunion-of-christendom.aspx?author=Lambeth+Con ference&year=1920. 84  Report on Diocesan Synod, June 27, 1915, Willis Papers, MS 2250, ff. 75–81. 85   Record, 16 August 1917, Willis Papers, MS 2303, ff. 39–40. 86  Resolution at http://www.anglicancommunion.org/resources/document-library/lam beth-conference/1920/resolution-43-development-of-provinces?author=Lambeth+Con ference&year=1920. See also Bishop Montgomery, ‘Preliminary Paper on Problems Connected with Provincial Organization’ (n.d.), ABU, Box 67, f.511.

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be strongly against provincial participation with the UMCA. ‘The Baganda are suspicious of all change,’ he told Archbishop Davidson, ‘firmly set on maintaining all things ecclesiastical exactly as they have received them; and, under the constitution of the Church of Uganda, they have the power to do this.’87 To Cyril Bardsley at CMS, Willis was even more frank: ‘The only other form of Christianity [Ugandans] know, or could know, is Romanism and the feeling towards Rome is much as it is among Orangemen.’88 Across the Indian Ocean, a different spirit prevailed. As early as 1919 Bishop Henry Whitehead of Madras had concluded that the debate had already shifted from earlier notions of federation to organic union. Arguing in support of a system of episcopal licences for non-Anglican clergy brought into such a union, Whitehead declared that it would be ‘almost impossible for the Lambeth Conference to refuse to allow the Indian Church to adopt this solution of the difficulty created by the division of the Western Church, except upon the theory that episcopal ordination is necessary for the validity of the sacraments’.89 Whitehead’s views were not universally applauded in the Church of England, however. In 1924 Cosmo Lang, Archbishop of York (and soon to be Archbishop of Canterbury), put the issue of episcopal ordination starkly: ‘[A] mere mutual commission is not really sufficient or indeed straightforward for it does not seem to recognise that in our judgment the existing non episcopal ministry has any inherent defect, particularly that they lack the authority which we believe to be given by episcopal ordination for the ministry of the Catholic Church’90 Lang’s views were those of the high church party but they were echoed by John Willis after his return to England in 1934: An episcopally ordained Ministry has a validity, or authoritative certainty, such as no other ministry can possess. Other forms of ministry have been undeniably blessed and used by God; no one would call in question their spiritual efficacy, for God is free to act as and how he will; but they are not guaranteed as are the regular and episcopally ordained ministries, and cannot be regarded as such. Our duty is to guard inviolate the historic ministry which we have inherited, and to do nothing which would compromise it; and this because that ministry, and that only, is in the line of the known will of God.’91 87  Bishop Willis to Archbishop Davidson, 31 January 1921, ABU, Box 67, f. 511. 88  Bishop Willis to the Revd. C. C. B. Bardsley, 7 February 1921, ABU, Box 67, f. 511. 89  Bishop of Madras, ‘Memorandum on the Proposed Service of Commission’, 8 September 1919, Palmer Papers, MS 2978, ff. 31–33. 90  Cosmo Lang to Edwin Palmer, 30 December 1924, Palmer Papers, MS 2978, ff. 263–266. 91  John Willis, ‘South India’, prob. 1939, Willis Papers, MS 2251, ff. 218–230.

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While it is true that Willis went on to note the disunity present within the Catholic tradition and warned against ‘a too rigid or unthinking following of tradition’, the tenor of his remarks hardly suggests a churchman who held the historic episcopate in low esteem and he was quick to note that recognition of Free Church orders need not be understood as putting them on equal footing with episcopal ones. The South India scheme nevertheless remained the blueprint upon which many Anglicans in East Africa, despite frequent setbacks, would continue to draw. While Ugandan opposition was responsible for the first failed attempt at provincial organization, it was the unexpected opposition of Mombasa that undermined a new agreement reached by a conference of the East African dioceses at Nairobi in 1927.92 This is not to say that Ugandans were unanimously in favour, however. After the Uganda Synod had voted by 120 votes to 71 to enter a provincial structure, a group of nine native clergy wrote directly to the Archbishop of Canterbury charging that Willis had exerted undue pressure in support of the scheme, that dissenters had not been accorded the right to present their case, and that the novelty of using paper ballots embossed with the names of the delegates had further discouraged opposition.93 Willis protested that the opposition came from a conservative minority within Baganda society (a minority whose objections to idolatry in worship had led them to protest not merely the presence of stained glass windows but even representations of the Cross!). He also noted that support for a province had been evidenced by five of the seven county chiefs and 32 of the 54 native clergy (in a synod where only ten percent of the delegates were European) and that there were no fewer than 17 speakers who opposed the resolution (compared to 26 who spoke in its favour). As to the manner of voting, twenty ballots had been subsequently discovered to have been cast by non-members of the synod.94 Some Evangelicals welcomed Mombasa’s reluctance: from the Ruanda Mission, the medical missionary Algernon Stanley Smith suggested that the revelations from the Malines Conference had cast ‘such a lurid light’

92  ‘The Proposed East African Province’ ( n.d.), ABU, Box 67, f.513. 93  Revds. Yeremiya Madukaki, Yobu Naigalira, Tomasi Bazira, Yoweri Zake, Henry Luganda, Onesimu K. Naubuga, Sedulaka K. Kibuka, Tomasi Senfuma and Edward Bakayana to Archbishop Davidson, 13 February 1928, ABU, Box 69, f.524. See also the petition with 180 signatories entitled ‘A COMMUNITY OF UGANDA CHRISTIANS WHO ARE NOT IN FAVOUR OF A PROVINCE BEING CONSTITUTED NOW’ to Archbishop Davidson, 29 February 1928, ABU, Box 69, f.524. 94  Bishop Willis to Archbishop Davidson, 20 February 1928, ABU, Box 69, f. 524.

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on the aims and mentality of Anglo-Catholicism that a pause to consider Uganda’s position was in order.95 Notwithstanding Mombasa’s rebuff, the East African bishops continued to plan for a future province. In September 1929, Willis and Heywood met with Arthur Kitching of the Upper Nile and George Chambers of Central Tanganyika and pledged to follow the example of the churches in South India while maintaining full communion with the See of Canterbury. Tellingly, they expressed a willingness to sanction use of the ‘non controversial parts’ of the 1928 Prayer Book and called for a book of additional services and prayers for African congregations, also urging the establishment of a central training college for the four CMS dioceses to train future candidates for the ministry.96 Just prior to the Lambeth Conference of 1930 the bishops sought and obtained a meeting with the new Archbishop of Canterbury, Cosmo Lang.97 In 1931 Willis, Heywood and Kitching met with the Bishops of Zanzibar, Masasi, Northern Rhodesia and Nyasaland and agreed to appoint a Standing Committee to meet annually to transact business. Much of the meeting concerned itself with questions surrounding marriage between Christians and non-Christians, polygamy, divorce, infant and adult baptism, circumcision and birth control. Discussion of reunion was deferred until the final day of the meeting and the drafting of a statement, linking it positively to the creation of a province, which was passed to the bishops of Mombasa and Zanzibar.98 Writing to Bishop Thomas Birley of Zanzibar shortly after the conference, Willis offered a pithy summary of the basic distinctions in CMS and UMCA practices that included their ‘democratic’ and ‘autocratic’ forms of government; a CMS policy of church-state cooperation as against a UMCA desire to ‘avoid all entanglements with the state’; and the respective preference for reunion schemes involving non-conformists and ‘the great episcopal Churches of East and West’. While praising UMCA’s discipline and commitment to the devotional life, Willis nevertheless noted critically its insistence on rigid uniformity within individual dioceses, the ‘autocracy’ that elevated bishops while neglecting lay consultation, and an attitude to the Sacrament ‘out of all proportion

95  A. C. Stanley Smith to Bishop Willis, 10 March 1928, ABU, Box 69, f. 524. 96  Memorandum of the conclusions arrived at by the Bishops of Uganda, Mombasa, Upper Nile and Central Tanganyika, meeting at Jinja, Uganda, Sept. 10th and 11th 1929, ABU, Box 67, f.514. 97  Archbishop Lang to Bishop Willis, 7 January 1930; Willis to Lang, 4 February 1930, ABU, Box 67, f.514. 98  ‘MINUTES OF CONFERENCE OF EAST AFRICAN BISHOPS HELD AT ZANZIBAR, June 2nd–6th 1931’, ABU, Box 71, f.532.

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to that given in Scripture’. Nevertheless, he continued to subscribe to a belief in the possibility of an ultimate union of the two traditions.99 The following year the newly established Standing Committee met for the first time. Freed from the glare of publicity, bishops from the two traditions were able to discuss at length how liturgical variations might be accommodated in the other jurisdiction. Starting from the premise that dioceses should remain free to experiment until ‘as in England, the various local uses can be combined into one really native that is African Prayerbook’, the bishops discussed such matters as whether CMS clergy might be willing to hear confessions of UMCA converts and grant conditional absolution and to schedule early day Eucharists to permit fasting Communion, while the UMCA bishops in turn pledged not to deny Communion to CMS converts who had not attended confession and expressed support for the Bishop of Mombasa’s efforts in promoting a reunion movement on South India lines.100 Even so, suspicion of Anglo-Catholic motives lingered. ‘Experience in South India shows that the hindrances to the scheme came from the extreme wing of the Anglo-Catholic element’, Bishop Heywood told his CMS colleagues in 1933. ‘This year they actually threatened to secede from the Anglican Church if the scheme went through.’101 Even after his retirement in 1934 Willis continued to be involved in the East African deliberations, although his support for a province stood in stark contrast to that of William Wilson Cash, General Secretary of CMS. ‘[Willis] feels it is right to put all the pressure he can upon the Church to persuade it to accept the plan’, Cash told Willis’ successor, Cyril Stuart. ‘I feel that if a Province is to come it must come with the goodwill of the people, and they must feel happy about it.’102 At the Diamond Jubilee celebrations of the Church of Uganda in 1937 Willis met with the bishops of the CMS dioceses as well as those of Zanzibar and Masasi, and learned from his successor that the Diocese of Uganda (and the Ruanda Mission) had once again turned against the provincial project, largely on political grounds: ‘The Africans’ misconceived fears and arguments about West Africa with no Province and great freedom and South

99  Bp. Willis to Bp. Birley, 16 June 1931, ABU, Box 71, f.532. 100  Bp. Willis, ‘STANDING COMMITTEE OF EAST AFRICAN BISHOPS: MEMORANDUM OF CONFERENCE OF JULY 13–15, 1932,’ ABU, Box 71, f.533. UMCA Bishops also demonstrated a willingness to conform to local custom by adopting the Northward position when celebrating the Eucharist in Uganda. ‘Memoirs and Thoughts of Bishop J. J. Willis,’ pp. 192–196. 101  Bp. Heywood to Bps. Willis and Chambers, 16 October 1933, ABU, Box 67, f.515. 102  Revd. W. Wilson Cash to Bp. Cyril Stuart, 14 April 1937, ABU, Box 71, f.534.

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Africa with A Province [sic] and the injustices of the colour bar were quoted.’103 Nevertheless, the conference ended with a ringing declaration from all the bishops present: One of the greatest advantages of a Province will be the building up of a self-governing African Church, as truly African as the Church of England is English … The impression which seems to be in the minds of some that the formation of a Province would result in European domination in the Councils of the Church, is based on a complete misunderstanding of the position. In an African Province, Africans will from the first take their full part, and their contribution is of vital importance. Nothing could be farther from our thoughts, in suggesting the Province, than to deprive the African of his rightful share in the Government of the Church. A Province would not weaken, but enormously strengthen the African position.104 The Church that emerged in the 1940s was indeed an African Church, but in Uganda, at least, it had long been so. At the 1928 International Missionary Conference in Jerusalem, the complaints of Indian delegates about the failure of local missions to devolve power stood in stark contrast with the declaration of Chief Siruane Kalubya that ‘in our country the Church is our own Church, as much as this robe that I am wearing; in Uganda nothing is done without our consent.’105 For John Willis, African Christian unity was as much the product of an indigenous understanding of ‘comity’ that still permitted denominational difference as it was of agreements between missionary societies and it was birthed in the fires of the East African campaigns in Rwanda, Burundi and Tanzania from 1914 to 1917, which brought together Africans from across the continent.106 This would take an even more profound form in the years following Willis’ departure, as the East African Revival swept across the region, uniting Anglicans with those of other Protestant traditions without compromising their denominational identity.107 ‘It may be that the Church in Uganda 103  ‘CONFERENCE OF EAST AFRICAN BISHOPS ON THE OCCASION OF THE DIAMOND JUBILEE CELEBRATIONS OF THE UGANDA CHURCH, KAMPALA, September 29th–October 2nd, 1937’, ABU, Box 71, f. 534. 104  ‘A LETTER FROM THE BISHOPS OF THE ANGLICAN COMMUNION IN EAST AFRICA, ASSEMBLED AT CONFERENCE IN KAMPALA, UGANDA, September 29th–October 2nd, 1937’, ABU, Box 71, f. 534. 105  ‘Memoirs and Thoughts of Bishop J. J. Willis’, pp. 153–154. 106  ‘Memoirs and Thoughts of Bishop J. J. Willis’, pp. 158–160 (quotation on p. 159). 107  Derek R. Peterson, Patriotism and the East African Revival: A History of Dissent, c.1935–1972 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012); Kevin Ward and Emma Wild-Wood, The East African Revival: History and Legacies (Farnham, Surrey: Ashgate, 2013).

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has been too slavish an imitation and reflection of the Church of England’, Willis commented in the early 1950s. ‘The words of the English Prayer Book have been faithfully, almost literally translated with a few minor adaptations; and many of the missionaries have felt very strongly that there ought to be far more spontaneity and room for initiative; that so many of the familiar Prayer Book phrases, to us hallowed by generations of experience, can mean little or nothing to the worshipper in Central Africa.’108 To the lament of many Anglo-Catholics, the Church of South India that united the Methodist Church, the South India United Church and the four southern Anglican dioceses into a single entity in 1947 upheld the principle of episcopacy without embracing the doctrine of Apostolic Succession.109 While they may well have blamed the architects of Kikuyu for this departure, such a charge does little justice to John Willis. Today the Anglican Churches of Uganda and Kenya (first elevated into the Province of East Africa in 1960) are distinctly Anglican bodies, whose commitment to the historic episcopate is not in doubt. Nor does Willis’ post-Kikuyu career suggest that he was a bishop who shrank from exercising episcopal authority. Ultimately, Kikuyu for Willis was what he always claimed it to be: a staging post on the road to a native church that must ultimately determine its own destiny. No less than the Anglo-Catholics who avidly followed the Malines conversations between Lord Halifax and Cardinal Mercier or the World Faith and Order Conference in Lausanne, did John Jamieson Willis seek to embrace a vision of Christian unity. That vision, articulated in 1939 as Europe rushed headlong into the second global struggle of the twentieth century, still has power, amidst the many twists and turns that the ecumenical movement has taken since 1913: For myself, I cannot but see in this whole movement toward Reunion, evident in every part of the world today, the action of the Holy Spirit; at a time when the nations of the world are becoming increasingly embittered and estranged from one another, drawing together into a unity unknown for centuries, the Christian Church in the world, that Church on which so vitally the future of the world depends.110

108  ‘Memoirs and Thoughts of Bishop J. J. Willis’, p. 89. 109  Stephen C. Neill, ‘Church Union in South India’, in Willis, Towards a United Church, pp. 75–148; Mark Laing, ‘The International Impact of the Formation of the Church of South India: Bishop Newbigin versus the Anglican Fathers’, International Bulletin of Missionary Research 33:1 (2009), pp. 18–22. 110  John Willis, ‘South India’, prob. 1939, Willis Papers, MS 2251, ff. 218–230.

Chapter 8

The Cost of Being ‘Catholick and Apostolick’ for the Church Missionary Society, 1899–1939 Ken Farrimond Is it impossible that, like Martin Luther they may have to give up either Evangelical principles or the Historic Episcopate? If so, you, dear Mr. Fox, I am sure, will say that it is the latter and not the former that must be surrendered.1

∵ This protest – sent to the leader of the Church Missionary Society by one of its most senior members during its centenary year in 1899 – attests to the abortive attempt to elevate the defence of Evangelical principles over cooperation with the institutional machinery of the Church of England at home and abroad.2 Had it succeeded, not only would there likely have been a proliferation of overlapping episcopal areas, divided along the lines of race and ecclesiastical tradition, but there might even have been an abandonment of the historic episcopate. That it failed should not distract scholars from the intensity of the struggle which raised very real questions regarding the nature of Evangelical ecclesiology within a body that at the time was the embodiment of Evangelical principles within the Church of England. Related questions over how theologically inclusive the CMS should be, precipitated the departure of a conservative minority from the CMS in the early 1920s and in the following decade the loss of Evangelical influence prompted much soul searching within the CMS as the churches it had helped form took their place within the 1  Fenn to Fox, 21 December 1899, G/C 9/2 Part 1. Unless otherwise stated, all archival references are from the Church Missionary Society Archives, housed at Birmingham University. The initial research, and a substantial amount of the text of this chapter were part of my PhD Thesis for the University of Leeds, 2003: ‘The Policy of the Church Missionary Society: Concerning the Development of Self-Governing Indigenous Churches, 1900–1942’. 2  Hereafter CMS. Founded in 1799 as ‘The Society for Missions to Africa and the East’, renamed ‘The Church Missionary Society’ in 1812, and ‘The Church Mission Society’ in 1995.

© koninklijke brill nv, leiden, 2019 | doi:10.1163/9789004388680_010

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broader Anglican Communion. The present chapter is thus an examination of the debate at the turn of the nineteenth century and the continued inherent tension of being Evangelical within a broader catholic and apostolic church. As an Evangelical society, the CMS used the term ‘catholic’ very sparingly, but nevertheless, it was helping to grow branches of a world-wide Church in communion with the Church of England. In its key 1901 Memorandum the CMS stated that it was ‘a necessary condition of the Church Missionary Society’s action in promoting the constitution of independent Churches that all plans be made with a view to their remaining in communion with the Church of England and with Churches in communion with it, holding fast Holy Scripture, the Apostles’ and Nicene Creeds, the two Sacraments, and the Historic Episcopate.’3 The echoing of the Lambeth Quadrilateral was deliberate, as was the slightly clumsy phrase ‘action in promoting the constitution’, which made it clear that as a Missionary Society of the Church the CMS had ‘no authority to constitute a Church’. The Memorandum recognised and encouraged attempts to reunite churches of different denominations and completely rejected the suggestion of the validity of racially based churches. The final clause of the memorandum declared that the Church of England was ‘at once Catholic and Protestant’. The implementation of the policy detailed in the 1901 Memorandum would create a variety of problems over the coming decades, including the schism of the early 1920s; the need to engage with the Church of England at home, particularly with regard to the appointment of missionary bishops; and the problems inherent in handing over groups of churches in the mission field to locally constituted dioceses. 1 The CMS during the Nineteenth Century The CMS was founded in 1799 by Evangelical churchmen as an Anglican ‘Voluntary Society’, being both strongly ‘Church’ (that is Anglican) and strongly Evangelical.4 Its founders were very willing to work with Evangelicals from other denominations in enterprises such as the Religious Tract Society and the Bible Society, but as ‘loyal members of the Church of England’ felt compelled 3  Memorandum on the Constitution of Churches in the Mission Field. Reproduced in full in E. Stock History of the CMS, Vol. IV (London: CMS, 1916), pp. 402–8. 4  The role and history of voluntary societies are discussed in Andrew Walls, ‘Missionary Societies and the Fortunate Subversion of the Church’, The Evangelical Quarterly 60 (1988), pp. 141–55. For fuller details of the CMS foundation, see Eugene Stock. History of the CMS, Vol. I (London: CMS, 1899), pp. 57–80.

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to work separately when it came to founding a missionary society.5 Although the primary aim of the CMS was preaching the gospel with a view to individual conversion, it was anticipated at the outset that those converts would form Christian communities and that churches would be planted. Since, for the twenty-five founding members who numbered 16 clergymen and 9 laymen, mission clearly had an ecclesiological aspect, it was agreed that working as a society within the Established Church was deemed more appropriate than an interdenominational approach. However, they consistently emphasised their belief in the ‘Church-principle, not the high-Church principle’.6 At times, the CMS’s relationship with the Church of England can best be described as ‘semi-detached’. From the outset, this new Society was independent of the ecclesiastical authorities. While there was always a very solid link between the Church and the Society, the CMS consistently maintained its independence and there was an enduring tension between its twin commitments to the Church of England and to keeping the CMS ‘in Evangelical hands’.7 When the CMS was founded there were no Anglican bishops outside of the British Isles and North America. By the time of its centenary, Anglican bishops and dioceses extended across much of the world, encompassing many of the CMS mission fields. It fell to Henry Venn, the son of one of the founders, to begin to define how the individual congregations started by CMS missionaries might develop into independent churches, free of missionary control. Venn, described as ‘the most influential British missionary theorist of the nineteenth century’, has been the subject of various detailed studies.8 As the ‘Honorary Clerical Secretary’ (very much a full-time job despite the title),9 Venn was deeply committed to the idea 5  Stock, History of the CMS, I, p. 64. Also G. R Balleine, A History of the Evangelical Party in the Church of England (London: Longmans, 1909), p. 166. 6  John Venn 1799, see Stock, History of the CMS I, p. 64. 7  Josiah Pratt quoted in D. M. Thompson, British Missionary Policy on the Indigenous Church: The Influence of Developments in Domestic Ecclesiology and Politics (Cambridge: North Atlantic Missiology Project, Position Paper 38, 1997), p. 20. For an early example of this tension see Hans Jacob Cnattingius, Bishops and Societies: A Study of Anglican Colonial and Missionary Expansion 1698–1850 (London: SPCK, 1952), p. 161. For an example from 1870, see pp. 232–3. 8  Brian Stanley, The Bible and the Flag (Leicester: Apollo, 1990), p. 66. See also Peter Williams, The Ideal of the Self-Governing Church (Leiden: Brill, 1990); W. Shenk, Henry Venn – Missionary Statesman (Maryknoll NY: Orbis, 1983); M. A. C. Warren, To Apply the Gospel (Grand Rapids MI: Eerdmans, 1971) and T. E.Yates, Venn and the Victorian Bishops Abroad (London: SPCK, 1978). 9  ‘Honorary’ meant that he was unpaid, the post being held by a clergyman of independent means until 1922. See Kevin Ward and Brian Stanley (eds), The Church Mission Society and World Christianity, 1799–1999 (Grand Rapids MI: Eerdmans, 2000), p. 2. From 1922 the post was renamed ‘General Secretary’.

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of an indigenous Church and helped to promote the appointment of the first indigenous bishop in West Africa in 1864. The story of Bishop Crowther and the way that he was unjustly perceived as a failure has been told extensively elsewhere and is one from which the CMS emerges with very little credit. It adversely affected CMS thinking on African bishops until after the Second World War.10 Venn’s missionary methodology proved highly influential. For Venn, the mission was totally separate and distinct from the church that it established. Its objective was a church that was self-supporting, self-extending and self-governing, with a bishop as the crowning point of the mission, only appointed when the structure was fully developed. Pastoral work was to be given over to ‘natives’ as soon as possible and structures for self-support and self-government were to be established from the start. The mission was the scaffolding that would be removed when the building was complete. The missionaries were not part of the church they built but would move on ‘to the regions beyond’ as soon as the church was strong enough. This ‘euthanasia’ was, however, delayed far longer than Venn had anticipated and his ideas ultimately gave way to the proposals outlined in the 1901 Memorandum.11 2

The Story of the 1901 Memorandum

In preparation for its centenary in 1899 the CMS embarked on a systematic review of all CMS policy. The twelve sub-committees appointed for this purpose did not include any of the nine CMS Secretaries who handled the Society’s day-to-day affairs, which meant that their reports were frequently contested at meetings of the main committee, of which the Secretaries were members.12 The division of the subjects between the various Section Committees was still governed by the Venn orthodoxy in which mission and church were clearly distinguished and the ‘Three-Self’ ideals were emphasized.13 The results of a questionnaire circulated to various CMS missions, which yielded 82 replies, the majority from the Indian field, revealed a desire among missionaries for significant reform in the structure of the Local Governing Bodies, which would then 10  Williams, The Ideal of the Self-Governing Church, pp. 146–97; E. A. Ayandele, The Missionary Impact on Modern Nigeria, 1842–1914 (London: Longmans, 1966), pp. 210–31, J. F. A. Ajayi, Christian Missions in Nigeria 1841–1891 (London: Longmans, 1965), pp. 233–73; James Webster, The African Churches Among the Yoruba 1888–1922 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1964), pp. 1–91. 11  See Williams, The Ideal of the Self-Governing Church, p. 214. 12  Appointed by the General Centenary Committee in March 1896. 13   Centenary Committee ‘B’ Report 1899, G/CCb 14, p. 31 (hereinafter Centenary ‘B’ Report).

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have various additional powers delegated to them. Calls for decentralisation alarmed the secretariat, however, and led to the creation of a thirteenth subcommittee ‘entirely devoted to that one matter’, comprising twelve members ‘and all the secretaries of the society’.14 The secretaries thus moved from a position of having no say to occupying a dominant position on the new Section XIII Committee and succeeded in suppressing the earlier report.15 It was not included in the final published report, though certain, very selective quotations were used and its findings – though clear – were largely ignored.16 Similar concerns arose in respect of the sub-committee looking at the ‘native’ church, whose remit was ‘The communities of Native Christians: as to discipline and measures to promote spiritual life; and as to self-government, self-support, and self-extension among them; particular attention being given to the relations of the Society with the bodies of Native Christians who have attained to more or less of independence.’17 The committee advocated a return to the traditional Venn ideal and the Secretaries failed to influence its ‘mainly elderly but quite distinguished’ members,18 who included two members with direct connections to Venn: J. B. Whiting, one of Bishop Crowther’s most staunch supporters on the CMS committee, and C. C. Fenn.19 Fenn had retired as East Asia Secretary in 1894 after thirty years in Salisbury Square20 and was ‘much-esteemed’.21 In some ways he was more radical than Venn, being willing to sacrifice the ‘native’ church’s relationship with the Church of England in his desire for a truly independent church.22 At times he demonstrated an ‘extremely loose adherence to episcopacy’.23 Peter Williams describes the subcommittee report as the ‘most whole-hearted commitment possible by an official CMS committee to the exact policies of Venn at the very end of the 14   Centenary ‘B’ Report, p. 16. 15  Given that they were full time staff, this meant that they could largely be relied on to attend every meeting, unlike the other members, hence it was often the case that they made up half or more of those present. 16   Centenary ‘B’ Report, p. 3. 17   Centenary ‘B’ Report, p. 25, Williams’ bibliography mentions only the Section IV Committee and the section IX Committee on ‘The Selection and Training of Candidates’. 18  Williams, The Ideal of the Self-Governing Church, p. 204. 19  Educated at Trinity College Cambridge and ordained in 1849, Fenn served as a missionary in Ceylon for 12 years before joining the home staff of the CMS. 20  Stock, History of the CMS, Vol. III (hereinafter ‘Stock III’), p. 679. 21  Stock IV, 258. C. C. Fenn (1823–1913) CMS Secretary 1864–94. 22  Williams, The Ideal of the Self-Governing Church, pp. 59–60. 23  B. Stanley ‘The Reshaping of Christian Tradition: Western Denominational Identity in a Non-Western Context’, in R. N. Swanson (ed.), Unity and Diversity in the Church (Oxford: Blackwell, 1996), pp. 406–20.

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nineteenth century’.24 It envisaged the formation of separate episcopal jurisdictions for CMS areas in India, each with its own ‘native’ bishop, but the report was rejected by the full committee.25 A special subcommittee, dominated by the CMS Secretaries, eventually drafted the 1901 Memorandum. Although only nine of twenty-nine members, their regular attendance meant that they usually constituted more than a third of those present, and for some crucial meetings a majority. It was their presence that resulted in conclusions that differed so greatly from that of the earlier report, aided, it must be said, by Fenn’s absence.26 The subcommittee initially got bogged down in the question of overlapping episcopal areas, then in an idea to ‘approach the Indian bishops as to the appointment of Native Assistant Bishops in the present Indian Dioceses’.27 Seeking guidance from historical precedents, they turned to Eugene Stock. Stock (1836–1928) came from a family that had hit hard times, but he was able to make very good use of his limited schooling. He worked his way steadily up in a merchants’ office for 18 years and, following a conversion experience at the age of twenty-one, had filled his spare time with church and Sunday School work. He was employed by the CMS in 1873, and by 1881 he was a full Secretary, later taking over the writing of the three-volume centenary history. By the turn of the century he was a powerful figure, ‘the referee to whom every one appeals for matters of precedent and history. Habitually present at every important Committee.’28 Stock was asked to produce a briefing paper on ‘Native Assistant Bishops’ for the next meeting. Instead he took the opportunity to seize the initiative and produced the first draft of what became the 1901 memorandum. It was Stock’s agenda which dominated subsequent meetings. The following months are well summed up by Williams who describes Stock’s ‘superb knowledge of sources, and his capacity to draft forms of words which gave some measure of satisfaction to opponents without conceding his own central convictions’.29 By the time of publication, after being circulated and discussed throughout the CMS, the Memorandum had grown from a just over a thousand words to nearly three thousand, but the key points remained unchanged. The final report was adopted by the General Committee in March 1901. 24  Williams, The Ideal of the Self-Governing Church, pp. 203–14, here p. 212. 25  17 May 1899, G/CCb 13. 26  Williams, The Ideal of the Self-Governing Church, p. 215. 27  Minute book G/C 9/2 part 2, p. 16. 28  Irene Barnes, In Salisbury Square (London: CMS, 1906) p. 37. 29  Williams, The Ideal of the Self-Governing Church, p. 216.

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The final version of the memorandum is quoted in full in Stock’s history.30 Stock wrote the following summary of the memorandum for the Pan Anglican Congress in 1908.31 1 The future Church in any country must be self-supporting, self-governing, self-extending. 2 It should continue ‘in communion’ with the English Church. 3 It should enjoy wide liberty within the well-understood limits of the Anglican Communion. 4 It should be comprehensive in regard to races. 5 It should be constitutionally governed by bishops, clergy, and laity. The primacy of the first point was emphasised by the use of ‘must’ as opposed to ‘should’. Although these were merely Stock’s words with no official sanction, they are a reasonable summary of much of the 1901 Memorandum. Stock’s overall aim was the development of independent churches with ‘native’ bishops, suitably adapted to the local circumstances. At this level there was no conflict with the Venn ideals; indeed they appear to be reaffirmed. However, a fully independent church should be able to reproduce itself without aid from the outside which, for Anglicans, required that there be at least three existing bishops to join in the consecration of new bishops. Where Venn saw the bishop as the crowning point of the mission, Stock saw a House of Bishops, or more specifically the formation of an Ecclesiastical Province comprising several dioceses, as the denouement.32 Such a province would be large, heterogeneous and in communion with other provinces. It and its component dioceses – in a departure from the Venn formula – would be comprehensive in regard to race. The fundamental weakness of the Venn methodology had been that, in order to protect the indigenous church, he had been willing to accept the principle of a racially separate church, but by 1900 many voices in the CMS insisted that there should be no racial division within the Church on ‘scriptural grounds’.33 The Memorandum also upheld the principle of reunion with other denominations and acknowledged that true independence meant that some churches might opt for a scheme of reunion that interrupted communion with the Church of England. The whole approach was fiercely attacked by Fenn, who was not a member of the new special sub-committee. His response to an early draft of the 30  Stock IV, pp. 402–8. 31  Stock IV, p. 401. Originally written for the 1908 Pan Anglican Congress. 32  This follows Lambeth 1897, Resolution 6. 33  13 October1899, G/C 9/2 part 1. Handwritten notes, no author stated but this seems to be what is referred to in the minutes as notes by Baylis at sub-committee meeting, 16/10/1899, G/C 9/1, 8.

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memorandum was characteristically forthright: ‘I feel sure that the permanent adoption of it by the C.M.S. will be impossible unless the Society ceases to be what it now is, a distinctively Evangelical organisation.’34 Fenn’s objection was not that the Memorandum would prevent the development of an indigenous church but that working with the existing Anglican episcopate compromised Evangelical principles. He would have preferred the CMS to develop its own, thoroughly Evangelical, ‘native’ episcopate. Fenn’s intervention did not result in any changes to the overall thrust of the Memorandum, but as Williams points out, it did lead to the inclusion of a statement that the Memorandum was based on the assumption ‘that the Church of England will remain loyal to Holy Scripture, and to Apostolic Christianity’.35 The CMS did not want a decisive shift away from the Church of England; therefore Stock’s logic was unchallengeable. Thus after 1901 the CMS’s commitment to a self-governing indigenous church remained, but it had to be a church that was both Anglican and comprehensive with regard to race. The CMS had rejected an approach that placed Evangelical principles above a commitment to staying in communion with the Church of England and its daughter churches. Over the course of the next few decades, however, the question of safeguarding Evangelical principles would again be raised within the CMS committees. 3

The Split with the Bible Churchmen’s Missionary Society There were Evangelicals and Evangelicals (Stock 1873).36

Within the Church of England, ‘Evangelical’ has always been a broad category, as Bebbington makes clear.37 In the first two decades of the twentieth century tensions mounted between conservatives and liberals within Evangelicalism in general and Anglican Evangelicalism in particular.38 Bebbington notes various ‘fault-lines’: on the ‘social gospel’, on the doctrine of the atonement and

34  Fenn to Fox, 21 December 1899, G/C 9/2, Part 1. 35  Williams, The Ideal of the Self-Governing Church, p. 220. 36  E. Stock, My Recollections (London: James Nisbet, 1909), p. 130. 37  D. W. Bebbington, Evangelicalism in Modern Britain (London: Unwin, 1989), p. 2. See also Timothy Larsen, ‘The reception given to Evangelicalism in modern Britain since its publication in 1989’ in Michael Haykin and Kenneth Stewart (eds), The Emergence of Evangelicalism (Nottingham: Apollos, 2008), pp. 21–60. 38  For example, in 1910 the Cambridge CICCU disaffiliated from the SCM. See Adrian Hastings, A History of English Christianity 1920–1985 (London: Collins, 1986), p. 89.

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on liturgical practice; but he identifies the key issue as the authority of the Scriptures.39 The CMS was supported by Evangelical Anglicans of all persuasions and employed both liberal and conservative Evangelicals at home and abroad. Indeed, the post of Honorary Clerical Secretary was held by a conservative, Fox, until 1910, and by a liberal, Bardsley, after 1910. Tensions between the two groups, described by a later CMS General Secretary as the time when ‘the conservatives and liberals had made the C.M.S. the cock-pit for their party strife’,40 eventually resulted in a split within the CMS and the formation of the Bible Churchmen’s Missionary Society (BCMS). On the conservative side was the non-denominational Bible League which had been formed in 1892 to oppose ‘higher criticism’ of the Bible. Its aim was ‘To promote the Reverent Study of the Holy Scriptures, and to resist the varied attacks made upon their Inspiration, Infallibility and Sole Sufficiency as the Word of God.’41 Bebbington describes the Bible League as maintaining a ‘watching brief over missionary developments’ and notes that ‘its influence can be detected behind outbursts of opposition to higher criticism.’42 After his retirement from the CMS, Fox became first Secretary, then President, of the Bible League which kept particular watch over the CMS for signs that liberal views were taking hold.43 In 1918 the conservatives, led by D. H. C. Bartlett, a Liverpool incumbent, formed a specifically Anglican group, the ‘Fellowship of Evangelical Churchmen’.44 On the liberal side, was the Group Brotherhood with which Bardsley had been involved since 1907.45 This was ‘a theological network for braver spirits’, rather than a formal organisation. It sought to co-operate in the institutional 39  David Bebbington, ‘Missionary Controversy and the Polarising Tendency in TwentiethCentury British Protestantism’, Anvil 13 (1996), pp. 141–57, here p. 144. 40  G/AP11/1941–45. Report by Cash to Executive Committee of the CMS, 15 October 1941. 41  See http://www.bibleleaguetrust.org/about (accessed 9 August 2016). Also in Bebbington, Evangelicalism in Modern Britain, p. 187. 42  Bebbington, ‘Missionary Controversy’, p. 147, and Bebbington, Evangelicalism in Modern Britain, p. 188. 43  Bebbington, ‘Missionary Controversy’, p. 147. 44  G. W. Bromiley, Daniel Henry Charles Bartlett: A Memoir (Burnham on Sea: Dr. Bartlett’s Executors, 1959), p. 24. 45  In 1923 this became the ‘Anglican Evangelical Group Movement’. Its objectives included ensuring Evangelical co-operation in the institutional life of the Church of England. Discussed in Ian Randall, Evangelical Experiences: A Study in the Spirituality of English Evangelicalism 1918–1939 (Carlisle: Paternoster, 1999), p. 47, and John Walmsley, ‘The History of the Evangelical Party in The Church of England Between 1906 and 1928’ (University of Hull, Ph.D. thesis, 1980), pp. 149, 202. The Group Movement was not connected with the Oxford Group.

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life of the Church of England in a way that more conservative Evangelicals refused to do.46 Membership was by invitation, and it only emerged from the shadows in 1923, publishing Liberal Evangelicalism: an Interpretation and adopting the name ‘Anglican Evangelical Group Movement’.47 By 1935 it had a membership of 1500 clergy.48 As a network it proved quite effective in campaigning. As one of its leaders, Guy Rogers, put it: ‘Evangelicals like myself were engaged in a life-and-death struggle to secure freedom of thought, not only for ourselves but for the organizations and institutions in the Church of England … Needless to say, the CMS in which most of us were nurtured from childhood was the greatest of these and the dearest to our hearts.’49 Conflict between the factions erupted in earnest in 1917 when Rogers believed that the time had come for the CMS to state publicly that it was willing to accept missionaries who held liberal views. Rogers organised what became known as the Chelmsford Memorial which had been presented to the CMS committee by the Bishop of Chelmsford. This called on the CMS General Committee to make certain affirmations that would secure a broad base of support, including that of liberal Evangelicals. This provocative Memorial was signed by about 80 people, three quarters of whom were associated with the Group Brotherhood.50 When Fox saw a copy he and D. H. C. Bartlett mobilised opposition in the form of another Memorial, this time signed by a thousand people, which sought an exclusivist approach that would have prevented those with liberal views from becoming CMS missionaries.51 Bardsley’s attitude at this time can be discerned in a private letter to Bishop Price of Fukien, in which he hoped for a closer relationship between the CMS and the Church of England. ‘If CMS remains in any real sense a sectional Society within the Church,’ he wrote, ‘it can never fulfil its vocation and we shall more and more drift into the backwaters.’52 For Bardsley, participation in the wider Church precluded being a narrow sectarian society. In a debate centred on the degree of latitude to be allowed on the authority of Scripture, conservatives sought to prevent those holding certain liberal views – for 46  Randall, Evangelical Experiences, p. 47. 47  Members of the Church of England, Liberal Evangelicalism: An Interpretation (London: Hodder, 1923). Contributors included G. Rogers, G. Warman and A. W. Davies. 48  G. Rogers, Rebel at Heart (London: Longmans, 1956), pp. 170–2. 49  Rogers, Rebel at Heart, p. 164. Rogers was at the time the Vicar of West Ham, a member of the Group Brotherhood, a relative of Bardsley and joint author with him of a book on revival. See Rogers, Rebel at Heart, p. 82. 50  G. Hewitt, The Problems of Success, Vol. I (London, SCM Press, 1971), p. 463. 51  See Bromiley, D. H. C. Bartlett, p. 22; Bebbington, Evangelicalism in Modern Britain, p. 218; Hewitt I, p. 464. 52  Bardsley to Price, 13 September 1917, G/AC8.

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example accepting Higher Criticism in relation to the Bible – from serving as CMS missionaries, while liberals argued for the acceptability of a wider range of beliefs within the CMS (which, in practice, excluded those who, in conscience, could not work within a Society which contained such liberal views). A temporary truce was achieved after a ‘memorials committee’, which included the leading protagonists from both sides, agreed on a report which was unanimously accepted by the General Committee. This would indicate that its contents were acceptable even to the most conservative Anglican Evangelical. The report emphasised that in interviewing missionary candidates ‘personal devotion to Christ as Lord and Saviour should be a primary condition for acceptance’, and deliberately rejected any attempt at a formal definition of biblical inspiration. The position of the celebrant at Holy Communion was also discussed under the heading of ‘Ceremonial’. The report avoids giving clergy instructions as to where to stand while celebrating communion, but states that ‘the north side has been the traditional position of the Evangelical School’ and the hope is expressed that this would be ‘the normal practice’ of CMS officers. However, the report notes that the eastward position had ‘been declared not illegal’ and that a clergyman might find himself visiting a church where to take the eastward position at a celebration was the normal practice and not to do so ‘would occasion great offence’. It was left to individual conscience whether or not to take an eastward position with the argument that ‘a representative of the C.M.S. need not celebrate in such circumstances; but if he does so, considerations of Christian courtesy may arise which might appear to him to make it a matter of obligation to conform to the custom of the church in which he officiates.’53 This compromise that was warmly welcomed by Bardsley, who had been giving careful consideration to resigning, but did not believe that it would be in the best interests of the Society if he did.54 In 1922 the problems resurfaced and this time the cracks could not be papered over. There have been a number of descriptions of the disputes from 1917 to 1922 which eventually resulted in the formation of the BCMS. The most comprehensive account is given by Hewitt, but, as Ward points out, he wrote his account at a time when it was still a ‘painful and sensitive issue’.55 Hewitt consequently tends to understate the severity of the split and it takes a fairly careful reading to realise, for example, that the CMS lost both a former honorary 53  Hewitt I, pp. 464–5 and Church Missionary Review (1918), pp. 103–11. 54  Bardsley to Gladstone, 18 March 1919, G/AS 3/4, in response to Gladstone’s call for him to resign. 55  See Hewitt I, pp. 461–73 and Ward in Ward and Stanley (eds), The Church Mission Society, p. 34.

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clerical secretary (Fox) and the CMS treasurer (Gladstone), a post second only to the Society President. The split is also described, with a conservative bias, by Walmsley, and there is also a similar account in the official BCMS history.56 Both Bardsley’s and Bartlett’s biographies provide accounts from their differing perspectives.57 Hylson-Smith’s reasonably balanced summary locates the dispute within the context of Anglican Evangelicalism.58 Bebbington gives an account in his Evangelicalism in Modern Britain and in a more recent article, which both place the controversy in the wider context of conflicts within Evangelicalism at the time.59 In 1922 the main debates took place in the General Committee of the CMS when over 400 people attended instead of the normal sixty.60 Fox was ‘particularly insistent that the time had come to act’ and in October 1922 he, Bartlett, Gladstone and various others formed the Bible Churchmen’s Missionary Society.61 A meeting of the CMS General Committee the following month failed to heal the breach. Hewitt records that only two serving missionaries left over the issue but the CMS lost support across the country from various individuals, groups and churches, with some 78 clergy resigning their membership.62 Walmsley claims that from 1922 onwards liberal Evangelicals ‘had captured the CMS’63 and Rogers certainly claims success for the liberals in ‘setting the CMS free to enter on the new world of thought and experience, of aspiration and unity …’64 However this is not the full story, since many conservative Evangelicals chose to remain within the CMS.65 Webb-Peploe, a key leader in the Bible League and the Keswick Convention, continued to support the CMS very publicly.66 Conservatives also remained in leadership positions; Walmsley 56  See Walmsley, ‘The History of the Evangelical Party’, pp. 185–201 and W. S. Hooton, and J. S. Wright, The First Twenty-Five Years of the Bible Churchmen’s Missionary Society 1922– 1947 (London: BCMS, 1947), pp. 4–16. 57  Joan Bayldon, Cyril Bardsley Evangelist (London: SPCK, 1942), pp. 69–75; Bromiley, Bartlett. A Memoir, pp. 22–36. 58  Kenneth Hylson-Smith, Evangelicals in the Church of England 1734–1984 (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1988), pp. 252–5. 59  Bebbington, Evangelicalism in Modern Britain, pp. 217–18; and Bebbington, ‘Missionary Controversy’, pp. 150–2. 60  Hewitt I, p. 467. 61  Bromiley, Bartlett, p. 26. 62  Hewitt I, p. 471. One of those who identified with BCMS was the father of Bishop Stephen Neill. See Timothy Yates, ‘Anglican Evangelical Missiology, 1922–1984’, Missiology 14:2 (1986), pp. 147–57. 63  Walmsley, ‘The History of the Evangelical Party’, p. 207. 64  Rogers, Rebel at Heart, p. 164. See also Bayldon, Cyril Bardsley, p. 74. 65  Bromiley, Bartlett, p. 36. 66  Bebbington, ‘Missionary Controversy’, pp. 152–3.

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himself cites G. T. Manley, who continued as Africa Secretary, as holding a conservative view on the Bible.67 The CMS General Secretary, Cash, appointed in 1925, was certainly not a liberal and the CMS later proved willing to set up a conservative enclave within its organisation in the shape of the Ruanda Mission.68 The CMS thus remained an Evangelical society, embracing both liberal Evangelicals and those conservative Evangelicals whose beliefs were such as to allow them to continue to work within a society that contained people with more liberal views. While the authority of Scripture was the actual issue in contention, the eventual split was predicated on how inclusive the CMS should be of liberal Evangelicals. As Bebbington concludes: ‘The schism was caused by biblical conservatives, but the split it created was not straightforwardly between conservatives and liberals. The division was within the conservative ranks.’69 A willingness to accept a breadth of views within the Society ultimately made it much easier for the CMS to work with the wider Church of England, both at home and abroad. 4

Working with the Wider Church of England

It was very important for the CMS to maintain a good working relationship with the Church of England, particularly with the Archbishop of Canterbury. While Fox maintained a reasonable relationship with the Archbishop of Canterbury, his conservatism meant that he did little to promote intra-Anglican co-operation. By contrast, Bardsley worked very closely with Archbishop Davidson and drew the CMS closer in its relationship with the Church of England. An early challenge for Bardsley came with the Kikuyu crisis. The CMS fully approved of the proposals for a federation of missionary societies in East Africa, and produced a response in the form of a ‘Memorial’ in support of the proposal, signed by 50 leading CMS supporters, including CMS secretaries, bishops, deans and academics.70 Prior to publication, this Memorial was shown privately by Bardsley to Davidson, who shared the memorial with the consultative body that he had established to consider the issue, but asked

67  Walmsley, ‘The History of the Evangelical Party’, p. 134. However, Bebbington notes that he did not assert ‘inerrancy’ (Evangelicalism in Modern Britain, p. 189). Manley was later to edit various books for the IVP, including The New Bible Handbook, 1947. 68  See Hewitt I, pp. 267–9. 69  Bebbington, Evangelicalism in Modern Britain, p. 218. 70  See various papers and resolutions in G/Y/AEF 1/3.

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Bardsley not to publish it until after that body had met.71 The CMS complied with this request. It was only in December 1921 that the CMS formalised its relationship with the Church of England by accepting the position of ‘Recognised Missionary Society’.72 This was the culmination of a reform process within the Church of England that had begun with the establishment of the ‘Central Board of Missions’ in 1908 to replace the ‘United Board of Missions of the Provinces of Canterbury and York’.73 The Central Board had no official representation from the missionary societies and a postwar review concluded that ‘the work of “Foreign Missions” is … a responsibility of the whole Church’ and should only be entrusted to societies ‘in so far as they are recognised as administrative agencies of the whole Body’.74 If the societies were carrying on work on behalf of the Church, it was argued, then it was not unreasonable for them to be represented on the Board charged with that work. The 1920 Lambeth Conference emphasised that missionary societies ‘should not stand outside the one organisation, but should be elements in it, co-ordinated, whether by a central advisory council or otherwise, under the supreme synodical authority, but retaining severally such degrees of independence as the conditions of their efficiency demand’. In the Autumn of 1920 the Church Assembly set up a small committee which proposed that there should be a new body, ‘constituted by, and responsible to the National Assembly’, that included official representation of the missionary societies.75 A system of ‘Recognised Societies’ was devised as the mechanism for representation and the CMS was one of those that accepted recognition. In spite of its symbolic importance, in practice recognition had very little impact on the CMS at that time. However, the new Missionary Council did trigger a change in leadership of the CMS when Bardsley was appointed as its full time secretary.76 After a temporary bridging appointment the new CMS General Secretary was W. W. Cash. Hastings speaks of ‘a certain unmistakable mental mediocrity settling down upon the world of the missionary societies 71  Copy of Memorial, and Davidson to Bardsley 15 July 1914, both in G/Y/AFE 1/1. 72  Minutes of the G. C. 14 December 1921, G/C1 1921, p. 398. 73  This had first met in 1891, the Canterbury Board having been set up in 1884 and the York Board in 1889. See C. T. Dimont and F. W. Batty, St. Clair Donaldson (London: Faber and Faber, 1939), p. 143. 74  Central Board of Missions, The Missionary Work of the Church (London: Central Board of Missions, 1918), p. 5. 75  ‘Report of the Committee appointed to consider the relation of the Central Board of Missions to the National Assembly’, as adopted 15 July 1921, copy in G/APc 2/2. 76  Bardsley then became Bishop of Peterborough in 1924.

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by 1920’.77 However, Cash, the first former missionary to hold the post, was fluent in Arabic and the author of fifteen books, including scholarly works on Islam and mission as well as simple books on Bible study. While dwarfed by his two successors, Max Warren and John Taylor, it would seem fairer to class Cash as the first of a more scholarly breed of leader in the CMS than as the last of those characterised by ‘mental mediocrity’.78 Cash was not afraid to challenge the received Venn orthodoxy, for example arguing in 1928 that ‘the word “independent” with reference to the indigenous churches is entirely wrong. We want the word “interdependent. We are all members of the body of Christ.’79 Appointed Bishop of Worcester in 1941, Cash was an Evangelical leader at a time where there were no outstanding Evangelical leaders in the Church of England. More conservative than Bardsley and a ‘frequent and acceptable’ Keswick speaker,80 he ‘believed also in active cooperation with other more catholic traditions’,81 a stance typified by a close personal friendship with, Stacy Waddy, the Secretary of the SPG.82 Under Cash, the CMS had cause to reflect on its relationship with the Missionary Council recognizing that accepting recognition ‘altered its position, the implications of which have never really been thought through by the Society’.83 Along with other Anglican societies, the CMS was suspicious of the Missionary Council.84 Their primary fear was of the eclipse and ultimate demise of missionary societies under the slogan ‘The Church – its own Missionary Society’, an approach developing at the time in some parts of the Anglican Communion.85 In practice, the Missionary Council was too powerless to provide much of a threat and the CMS, with other missionary societies, was able to resist increases in its powers. The Council’s ability to grant or revoke recognition to Missionary Societies, though arguably a concern for small societies and diocesan associations, posed little danger for the CMS (and the SPG) whose size meant that removal of status would have undermined the credibility of the Missionary Council. 77  Hastings, A History of English Christianity, p. 252. 78  As Hewitt points out. See Hewitt I, p. 443. 79  International Missionary Council, Jerusalem 1928: Report, Vol. 3: The Younger and Older Churches (London: Oxford University Press, 1928), p. 185. 80  Hewitt I, p. 443. 81  The Times, Obituaries 1951–1960 (Reading: Newspaper Archive Developments, 1979). 82  Etheldred Waddy, Stacy Waddy – Cricket, Travel and the Church (London: Sheldon Press, 1938). 83  Memorandum by the Secretaries for the CMS Commission meeting on 12 May 1932, G/APc2/2. 84  Minutes of the CMS Commission, 17 May 1932, G/APc2/1. 85  Described in the Lambeth Conference Report 1920, p. 83.

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In 1932 the CMS more carefully defined its relationship with the MC and accepted that it was ‘the function of the Missionary Council to advise a society as to its policy, whether at home, or abroad in its bearing upon the responsibility of the whole Church’. However, it also made the explicit assertion that ‘the right of the Society to initiate fresh work, or new Missions, is in no way subject to the control of the Council.’ Furthermore, there was no obligation for the MC ‘to be the only link between the home Church and provinces and dioceses overseas’.86 The issue of communication between the CMS and overseas dioceses was becoming more crucial as the implications of the 1901 Memorandum were eventually worked out in practice and significant numbers of CMS missions took their place in diocesan structures, a process known as diocesanization. 5 Diocesanization The logical conclusion of the policy agreed in 1901 was that all CMS missions would either become dioceses in their own right or become part of other dioceses. Stock had discerned the road that the CMS would take with remarkable accuracy but was unclear how that journey ought to begin. In the period before the First World War the CMS took a pragmatic approach that resulted in very little change in the governance of its missions and the concentration of power in the hands of the CMS Secretaries in London and, under them, the various mission authorities in the field. The great weakness in the CMS policy at this time was that it had failed to address the question of how it wanted to relate to dioceses, once the indigenous Churches that were the result of its labours were fully integrated in to local dioceses. This was true in all CMS Missions, both in India and elsewhere. Such pro-active planning could have been done at any time during the first two decades of the twentieth century but it was not until after the War that these questions were finally addressed. By the early 1920s it was agreed that change in India was long overdue. It was symptomatic of the changes taking place that further decisions on the work in India were not to be made by a committee in London, but in India itself, with the Parent Committee reported to be ‘sending out a Delegation to India to study in India, and with Indians’87 the issues facing the Church. The visit to India would provide the CMS leaders with both information and ample opportunities for discussion, but it was the inclusion of three leading Indian 86   Report of the CMS Commission: Section 1, September 1932, G/APc2/1. 87  ‘Indian Delegation Paper No. 1: To our Brethren and Fellow-workers in the Church of Christ in India.’, 11 July 1921, G/AD 1/3.

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Christians which marked the most significant change in approach, indicating that the Church in India was coming of age and it no longer simply fell to the CMS to make decisions on its behalf. ‘While the Delegation desire to take counsel with the foreign missionaries,’ declared one letter to CMS workers in India, ‘it may best be thought of as a Delegation to the Indian Church.’88 The whole delegation was instructed to take advantage of ‘all possible opportunity for consultation with Indian as well as European opinion’.89 The report of the India delegation is characterized by a word that the delegation appears to have invented – ‘diocesanization’. It is not mentioned in any of the initial papers of the delegation, and only once in the delegation report, but it came to prominence when Bishop Waller published an article in the CMR, strongly advocating the proposed policy, entitled The Diocesanization of the Church Missionary Society.90 Diocesanization does not refer to the formation of dioceses. It is rather the process by which missionary societies handed over control of churches or institutions, that they had founded, to the existing diocese in which the mission was located. The dioceses normally contained churches associated with more than one Anglican missionary society. This approach had been strongly advocated by the 1920 Lambeth Conference,91 without using the word diocesanization. The CMS not only adopted a policy of diocesanization in India in 1922, but also set up a Committee of Reference in India, to ensure that diocesanization actually happened. As in 1901, this Committee began by recognising that framing diocesan constitutions was not the job of the CMS (p. 5),92 but that at certain times the CMS would be consulted concerning the incorporation of CMS work into a diocesan constitution. It therefore sought to lay down clear principles which it hoped to see incorporated into a diocesan constitution, with regard to how transfers would be accomplished and what the CMS’s relationship to the diocese would be after the transfer. Certain safeguards were required. The fundamental principle that the CMS felt to be essential to any diocesan constitution was ‘effective Indian representation’. It was expected that the 88  ‘Indian Delegation Paper No. 1: To our Brethren and Fellow-workers in the Church of Christ in India.’, 11 July 1921, G/AD 1/3. 89  Minute of the General Committee, 13 January 1921, G/C1 1921, p. 40. 90  E. H. M. Waller, ‘The Diocesanization of the Church Missionary Society’, Church Missionary Review 73 (1922), pp. 204–10. In 1945 ‘diocesanised’ is used to describe missions in seventh-century England. See J. McLeod Campbell, Christian History in the Making (London: Church Assembly, 1946), p. 9. 91  Lambeth Conference 1920, Resolution 34, pp. 35–36. 92  In the following section, page references refer to the page in the final version of General Principles.

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corner stone of this would be the election of representatives from Parochial Church Councils (p. 6), but it was recognised that there was a danger that some dioceses would be dominated by chaplains and missionaries. In situations where Indian opinion was not predominant in the diocesan structures, the section of the diocesan structure governing Indian work would be almost entirely Indian and there would be Indian representation on all the other diocesan bodies. The CMS concerns over representation were not confined to race, but included an emphasis on strong lay representation on all committees,93 which was seen as vital to any future Church reunion (pp. 5–6) and women’s enfranchisement. Here the initial recommendation in an early draft of General Principles for their full enfranchisement had ultimately to be watered down to a declaration that women should not permanently be excluded from ‘rights or privileges which are open to the laity’ (p. 6). The Committee of Reference was in a quandary, for while it wanted to empower Indian Christians, both men and women, in some areas Indian opinion was strongly against women’s enfranchisement and committee members felt that they could not force the issue. However, they did stress that women’s work needed a special committee if it was not to be neglected and they urged the adoption of the order of deaconess (p. 6). General Principles included other safeguards that the CMS wished to see in place before the transfer of CMS-founded churches. It recognised that, in future, the diocese would be solely responsible for the appointment of pastors, but urged that congregations be consulted and that appointments be made by ‘a board containing a majority of elected members’ (p. 8). The ownership of parochial property (churches, parsonages and schoolhouses) would be transferred to ‘a suitable trust association in the various dioceses’ (pp. 9–10). Concerns about safeguarding ‘Modes of Worship’ were allayed by the inclusion in the provisional Provincial Constitution of safeguards for a congregation’s rights in matters of ritual and ceremonial. The final version of General Principles was thus able to note its satisfaction with this proposal and express the hope that each diocese would adopt the same rule (p. 8). The Committee of Reference was divided over what to say about the powers of the episcopate, fearful that saying too much might rouse hostility in the dioceses but also sensing that raising the issue without specifics would be

93  This was an issue that Bardsley felt strongly about in the English context also; see Bayldon, Cyril Bardsley, pp. 15, 123.

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unhelpful.94 It drew attention to the problem of the autocratic powers exercised by the chairmen of the Church Councils, noting that frequently these powers were then taken over by the bishop.95 This section of the report was carefully re-worded several times and ultimately made clear that no criticism was implied of previous action by bishops but that diocesan committee recommendations should be ‘treated by the Bishop not merely as tentative suggestions but as responsible recommendations to be reversed only under exceptional circumstances’ (pp. 8–9). The report also stated that bishops should not control the appointment and transfer of members of staff of colleges or hospitals (p. 9). While the CMS was very willing to hand over control of the churches that it had founded, it was not prepared to simply hand over its other institutions to the dioceses. Rather, it envisaged a two-stage process of transfer. Initially the institutions would be governed by more or less the same committee as previously, formally under the diocese but with the CMS Parent Committee still appointing the Secretary (p. 11). The second stage was more distant, and presupposed that this committee would take over responsibility for all such work in the diocese, when the secretary would be elected by the diocesan council. At this stage, it was hoped that the committee would be primarily elected, with representatives of both European and Indian workers (p. 11). Even so, it was explicitly stated that some institutions should and would be kept for a longer time under more direct CMS control, until the Indian Church had more medical or educational experts to manage them (p. 12). After diocesanization the CMS would still help the diocese with money and personnel. Far from these changes being merely an exercise in cost-cutting, the CMS expressed its willingness to help with the extra administrative costs for diocesan offices which would result (p. 13). However, it was also emphasised that self-support should be encouraged, and although no rigid rules would be applied, annual grants to dioceses should not be regarded as endowments, though the CMS would endeavour to maintain them (p. 12). The CMS would also consider additional grants for extension of work (p. 13) and was particularly keen on maintaining the evangelistic impetus, recommending that there should be diocesan bodies specifically charged with this work, which would receive financial support from the CMS (pp. 6–7).

94  ‘Draft Statement of Fundamental principles ...’ by Committee of Reference, January 1924, G/Y/Ig3, in the Appendix written by Davies at request of the Committee of Reference. 95  See Minute of the Committee of Reference on the ‘Tinnevelly Scheme’, 20 January 1924, G/Y I10/3.

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Throughout the 1920s, diocesanization steadily progressed in India. For the only time in the first half of the twentieth century, the CMS was proactive rather than reactive in handing over control of its missions. It was the logical and inevitable conclusion of decisions made at the turn of the century, but it was not without its cost. When Cash became General Secretary, the diocesanization policy continued, though control was returned to Salisbury Square in 1926 and the implementation of the process in China was consequently more haphazard, while diocesanization was never really pursued in Africa under either Bardsley or Cash. An area that would prove particularly difficult for the CMS was Ceylon with its strong SPG tradition. The CMS work, dating from 1818, was less extensive and had seen significant retrenchment in terms of missionaries and financial support since 1910. There was a history of conflict between the CMS and the Bishop of Colombo; in the 1870s a dispute over ‘the range of his episcopal authority’ resulted in the temporary withdrawal of licences for the clerical CMS missionaries. Mark Carpenter-Garnier became Bishop of Colombo in 1924, having served as a curate at All Saints, Margaret Street and then as Librarian at Pusey House, Oxford. He was strongly Anglo-Catholic and quickly fell into dispute with some the CMS missionary at the Peradeniya Training Colony, a federation between the CMS and the Wesleyan Methodist Missionary Society where they each trained evangelists and teachers. The CMS missionary concerned was J. P. S. R. Gibson, who was severely criticised by the bishop for engaging in intercommunion and joint services. Gibson left Ceylon in 1927 to become Principal of Ridley Hall, Cambridge, and Bishop Carpenter-Garnier sought assurances from the CMS that his successor ‘shall not receive the Holy Communion at the hand of a Wesleyan Minister’ and also sought severe restrictions on joint services. The possibility of the bishop not licensing the new CMS missionary, A. C. Houlder, was considered by the CMS ecclesiastical committee. They discussed whether he would then be able ‘to celebrate Holy Communion in a non-Anglican Institution such as Peradeniya’. The prevailing view was ‘that a Priest requires a licence for those ministerial acts which, by the requirement of the Prayer Book, are to be carried out by the priest only.’ Thus appointing him without a licence by the bishop was not an option. The CMS recommended to Houlder that he comply with the bishop’s wishes. However joint noneucharistic worship was something they could not condemn and wrote to the bishop quoting the 1920 ‘Appeal to all Christian People’ at length in support of this. Cash was clearly suspicious of Carpenter-Garnier. Writing privately to the Bishop of Salisbury, Cash describes the Bishop of Ceylon’s policy, which to him

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‘seemed to be to dismiss as fast as possible all previous C.M.S. workers, and to put in fresh workers of a catholic type, and thus bring the whole district over to a catholic position, and to give it a catholic colour’.96 Cash enquired more closely about the effects of diocesanization and the mission secretary in Ceylon wrote in response to Cash’s enquiries. He describes the Bishop’s position as recognising that Evangelicalism has a valuable contribution to make to the Church in Ceylon if it is associated with convinced Churchmanship. He is frankly not anxious to have Evangelical clergy in the Diocese who will become greatly perturbed at the placing of a Cross on the Holy Table, or to have clergy serving in the Diocese who so far as their convictions are concerned could as readily have offered themselves for, say the Wesleyan Ministry.97 Cash’s first visit to India in 1934 raised serious doubts about the results of diocesanization, although the report of the visit took the process of diocesanization for granted in its overall theology of a ‘church-centric’ approach to mission, or more specifically to evangelism, which was typical of Cash’s later writing.98 Cash’s concerns were reinforced particularly by a forthright letter from the Rev. W. E. S. Holland, a former principle of St. John’s, Agra: ‘As no Diocesan or Provincial constitution can adequately secure to the Indian Church the continuance of the distinctive Evangelical contribution, it is the responsibility of CMS to do all it can to that end.’99 Cash responded by recalling the Ecclesiastical Committee, after a five year break.100 In addition to various papers, including a copy of Holland’s letter, Cash provided members with a long and detailed memorandum of his own, entitled ‘The CMS and the Church Overseas’ and marked ‘Strictly Confidential’.101 In this document Cash explains that ‘while the C.M.S. is in every sense a Church of England Society it is nevertheless distinctively Evangelical’ and its supporters ‘believe that the C.M.S. stands for great Evangelical principles as distinct from the Anglo Catholic and High Church positions in the Church.’ Cash accepted that the CMS does ‘stand for principles which often conflict seriously with the convictions of Anglo Catholics and others’. However, Cash was still adamant that ‘we should not reopen the question of diocesanization’, but added that he felt that ‘the time has 96  Cash to Donaldson (Bishop of Salisbury), 17 February 1930, in G/Y Ag3. 97  Gastor to Cash, 31 March 1930, G-Y CE2. 98   Report of the Secretaries’ Visit to India 1934–35, G/AD1/5. 99  Extract from letter from Rev. W. E. S. Holland to General Secretary, 1 March 1936, G/C22. 100  Ecclesiastical Committee minutes, 29 April 1936, G/CS5, p. 283. 101  Cash to Ecclesiastical Committee, 24 March 1936, G/C22.

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come when the CMS should face some of the resultant issues.’ Perhaps most disturbing for Cash was that ‘the aim of bishops in India (speaking generally) seems to be to eliminate the distinctive elements which came from the CMS and to produce a single type of Churchman – Central or High.’102 Cash presented the issue of theological training as crucial, his key point being whether to cooperate in diocesan schemes or provide an alternative. Ceylon was cited as an example of a situation where diocesan theological training was on ‘definitely Anglo Catholic lines’: the CMS has ‘either to cooperate in this College, send its ordinands to it and be prepared for them to become Anglo Catholics; or the Society must set up an alternative theological centre of its own….. The parishes ask for Evangelical clergy and they cannot be found.’103 Cash also described at length a similar problem being faced in North India, where the CMS was struggling to produce Evangelical clergy though the existing system. He contrasted the system in place in England where ‘there has been no corresponding diocesanizing of theological training. As far as I know no serious body of clergy have advocated the amalgamation of Ridley and Cuddesdon or Wycliffe and Mirfield.’104 The Ecclesiastical Committee meeting of April 29, 1936 is unusual in that, in addition to the usual minutes, the CMS archives contain what appears to be a verbatim report of the arguments that were put forward during the meeting.105 This meeting thus offers some insight into the relationship between what actually happened and the minutes produced. The meeting was chaired by the Bishop of Manchester, F. S. G. Warman, and both Cash and A. W. Davies (who had been secretary to the Committee of Reference in India) played leading roles. Also influential was the Rev J. P. S. R. Gibson who, as a CMS missionary in Ceylon, had been Principal of Trinity College, Peradeniya, from 1914 to 1927. At the end of his time in Ceylon he fell into a serious dispute with the Bishop of Ceylon over forms of worship and intercommunion and (as noted above) returned to England as Principal of Ridley Hall.106 Hewitt says that ‘there was

102  Memorandum by Cash for Ecclesiastical Committee n.d. (c.24 March 1936), G/C22. 103  Memorandum by Cash for Ecclesiastical Committee n.d. (c.24 March 1936), G/C22. 104  Memorandum by Cash for Ecclesiastical Committee n.d. (c.24 March 1936), G/C22. 105  ‘Notes of discussion at Ecclesiastical Committee’, 29 April 1936, G/C22. The verbatim document does not record everything said by Cash in his first speech, as recorded in the minutes, but has more than the minutes thereafter. It might have been used to produce the minutes or, alternatively, might be a separate record specifically for the General Secretary. 106  Minutes of the Ecclesiastical Committee 8 December 1927, G/CS5; see also Hewitt II, pp. 191–2.

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a deep vein of Protestantism’ in his faith and that he spoke with authority and feeling on matters pertaining to Ceylon.107 The meeting began with extensive comments by Cash as he spoke to his memorandum. His spoken comments again make clear his views: ‘Having founded an Evangelical ministry, how is it going to be maintained? Not by safeguards. No formula will suffice. It becomes a question. Where is the CMS going?’ In the early stages, the minutes represent a fair, though brief, summary of discussions. A long speech by Davies is effectively summarised in one comment: ‘We are in grave danger of regarding what has happened in Ceylon as typical of other dioceses.’ Gibson’s long and detailed response, to the effect that there were hopeful signs but that Ceylon might well prove typical of India, is again summarised well in the minutes. As the pace of discussion picked up and people’s comments became much shorter, the minutes fail to tell the whole story. For example, after the financial problems and difficulties of finding suitable missionaries had been explained, there is the following exchange: Bishop of Rochester – Does that mean then that we do nothing? We must do something in this matter. Gen. Sec. We cannot stand by and see the work of 80 years which has been built on Evangelical lines and our Congregations turned into Anglo-Catholics. Various ideas were proposed. Some were ignored and others were knocked down immediately by Gibson wielding detailed local knowledge, but all without comment in the minutes. In the end – albeit with some members still demurring – it was agreed to send missionary reinforcements to Ceylon, to extend the policy of bringing suitable Ceylonese to train in England and to seek ways for more CMS involvement in clergy training in Ceylon. For North India, Cash’s plans for an Inter-Diocesan College, permanently under CMS control and not subject to diocesanization, were accepted. While the minutes record the conclusions, they do not give a full picture of the intensity of the debate. Cash wrote several times to the Bishop of Colombo indicating an interest by the CMS in the training of Evangelical clergy in Ceylon.108 The bishop was willing, but complained that CMS missionaries expected ‘to maintain

107  Hewitt II, p. 192. 108  These initially caused more tension; see, for example, Cash to Carpenter-Garnier, July 1936, and Carpenter-Garnier to Cash, 19 August 1936, G/Y CE2; Cash to Carpenter-Garnier, 15 October 1936, G/Y CE2.

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rigid “watertight compartments” of work and influence’.109 In February 1937 Cash proposed a meeting with the bishop, but also indicated that he believed that further diocesanization in Ceylon should be suspended until after these discussions.110 The situation in Ceylon was of course more complex than simply the introduction of Anglo-Catholic practices. Houlder explained to Cash in 1937 that there were two liturgical tendencies that need to be distinguished – some ‘would call one of these the Romanising tendency; the other is the desire to experiment in forms of worship that suit the temperament of the people, (while at the same time being in accordance with the Church’s order and so dubbed “Catholic”).’ He went on to explain that the bishop particularly supported liturgical experimentation within a missionary context and also that Evangelicals of a liberal persuasion in Ceylon did not see it as being ‘incompatible with the Evangelical character of the Society’s work’.111 The CMS’s response was to express a concern that there were no steps taken ‘in any field which would prejudice progress towards Union either in that field or in any other’. Houlder went on to argue that We have to blame ourselves for having failed to inspire and train young men to respect the ministry as a vocation, including a true attitude as to the value of the Church’s Sacraments. If others have over-estimated the position of the Sacraments, out here we have in our Schools underestimated them. So that the peculiar duties of the Christian minister in administering Sacraments have seemed hardly to be a job worth doing to our young men.112 In Ceylon, at least, the desire to maintain ‘Evangelical principles’ was overshadowing the policy of diocesanization. The CMS’s problems in Ceylon stemmed from the relatively weak CMS presence in the diocese and the bishop’s general lack of sympathy, a situation not unknown in parts of India. In much of the rest of the world, however, the CMS was the predominant Anglican tradition and the Bishops who were appointed were not only sympathetic to the CMS, but were actually nominated by the Society.

109  Carpenter-Garnier to Cash, 25 November 1936, G/Y CE2. 110  Memo by Cash to India Secretary, 18 February 1937, G/Y CE2. 111  Houlder to Cash, 11 March 1937, G-Y CE2. 112  Houlder to Cash, 11 March 1937, G-Y CE2.

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Appointment of Bishops

The CMS was committed to its missions remaining in communion with the Church of England, which meant either becoming part of existing dioceses or being formed into new dioceses each with their own bishops. As a society independent of, but working with, the Church of England, the CMS could not ordain or license clergy, nor could it consecrate bishops or appoint bishops. Episcopacy within the Church of England meant that the most senior clergyman for a CMS mission was somebody whom the CMS could not actually appoint and for whom they had to depend on the goodwill of the ecclesiastical authorities. In some dioceses the CMS was a minor player, with other missions or the expatriate community having a more prominent role, and had little if any say in the appointment of the bishop. In many dioceses, however, the CMS was the only Anglican presence, or very nearly so, but because these dioceses were not yet part of a province they came under the jurisdiction of the Archbishop of Canterbury. Had the Archbishop been completely antagonistic to the CMS, then this could have proved very costly, but on the whole a modus vivendi prevailed, though the CMS did occasionally try to push the limits of this. When appointing a bishop in an area that was primarily the result of CMS work, the Archbishop of Canterbury would always consult the CMS General Secretary. Fox had worked out a procedure with Archbishop Benson in 1896 after Benson had objected to the CMS presenting only one name to him, which he described as ‘a pretence of selection’.113 It was therefore agreed that the procedure would be thus: ‘The Honorary Secretary would place before the Archbishop with two or three bishops, three or more names, and would give (in person, if he chose) the account of each and the Society’s views about them. The bishops would not be pledged to appoint one of these men any more than the Archbishop is now.’114 Benson recognised that the CMS had the right to withdraw its assistance should the person chosen prove unacceptable. When Randall Davidson became Archbishop of Canterbury, Fox did try to push the boundaries further. In connection with the Archbishop’s first appointment of a bishop in a CMS area (the Diocese of Travancore and Cochin in 1904), Fox wrote to Davidson detailing the history of the appointment and politely claiming for the CMS the right to nominate a candidate to the Archbishop, who would then consecrate him under the Jerusalem Bishopric Act. This claim was 113   Memorandum regarding the appointment of CMS Bishops by ‘W. R. C. C.’, 4 July 1912, G/Y CHg3 includes the crucial letter from Benson and an analysis of the various appointments. 114  Benson to Fox, 11 March 1896, copy in G/Y CHg3.

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based on precedent, the continued CMS funding of the stipend and the fact that the diocese could not ‘lawfully exercise its responsibilities in the nomination of a Bishop’, and seemed to ignore the approach agreed with Benson.115 Davidson consulted Copleston (Bishop of Calcutta and Metropolitan of India) who agreed with Davidson that the CMS ‘should be amply consulted’, but that there was no actual right of nomination and even the development of a ‘quasiright of Patronage’ was to be avoided.116 Copleston wished the procedure to be that the candidate – on whom he agreed – should be recommended to the diocese jointly by Davidson, the CMS and himself (representing the province) who would then give their assent. Davidson indicated that he preferred to meet the candidate before giving his approval and would normally want more than one name to be submitted to him.117 Consultation with the CMS usually took the form of the General Secretary going to Lambeth Palace for a meeting with the Archbishop; Bardsley and Cash continued Fox’s practice in this regard. Notes from these meetings were usually kept and discussions were normally followed up by letter, often by the Archbishop himself, but sometimes by his chaplain. The question of ‘nomination’ was a constant theme, for the CMS never had the right to nominate to any bishopric, even when they paid the full stipend. Indeed, the suggestion made in 1912 to Davidson that the CMS would fund a bishopric for Persia, if one of their missionaries was appointed, received a robust response from Davidson: ‘I should probably be guided by the advice of yourself and your colleagues as in other cases, but it is another thing for me to accept the obligation of nominating a Bishop with the definite limitation which your letter mentions.’118 Needless to say, the CMS accepted this and their preferred candidate, C. H. Stileman, was duly appointed.119 When he came to be replaced five years later, the CMS was again fully consulted.120 Thus the practice for many CMS dioceses was for the CMS to suggest names and the Archbishop to accept one of them, usually the first choice. Such suggestions were sometimes called ‘nominations’, but were never based on a right to nominate. This was an entirely informal arrangement, and the Archbishop could have appointed anyone he wished, and clearly did consult other people. What would have happened if a totally unsuitable bishop had been appointed is academic, since in the whole period 115  Fox to Davidson, 22 November 1904, G/Y I2/1/2C. 116  Copleston to Davidson, 21 December 1904, copy in G/Y I2/1/2C. 117   Memorandum regarding the appointment of CMS Bishops by ‘W. R. C. C.’, 4 July 1912, G/Y CHg3. 118  Davidson to Bardsley, 14 June 1912, G/Y/PE4. 119  Further extract from minutes of the Ecclesiastical Committee, 2 July 1912, G/Y/PE4. 120  See various letters and papers between Bardsley and Davidson from 1917 in G/Y/PE4.

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from 1900 to 1942 there was no diocese where the CMS was predominant where the Archbishop disregarded its ‘nominee’. Where the CMS fell noticeably short was in its promotion of indigenous Christians as bishops. The one obvious exception, the appointment of Azariah to the Diocese of Dornakal, was not a CMS initiative, though the CMS gave its support. It is to the CMS’s credit that they gave Azariah authority over their mission at an early stage, but the success of the Diocese of Dornakal underlines strongly the most glaring failure of the CMS during this period, namely that it did not produce ‘native’ diocesan bishops. It has been argued elsewhere that this can be largely blamed on the unjustified belief that the first CMS indigenous bishop, Crowther on the Niger, had been a failure as a diocesan bishop. This perception coloured CMS policy, particularly in Africa, where indigenous diocesan bishops were not appointed until the eve of political independence. In India in the mid-1930s, however, the CMS did begin actively to promote Indian diocesan bishops, largely as a result of Cash’s visit to India and his admiration for Azariah, but this change of heart came too late as the CMS no longer had influence on the appointment of bishops in India. In the late 1930s the CMS did extend this approach to China, resulting in the only indigenous diocesan bishop to be appointed as a result of CMS influence under Cash, Bishop Song of Western Szechwan. The CMS was able to influence this appointment only because Cash, the General Secretary at the time, had successfully convinced Archbishop Lang to ignore the 1930 Lambeth Conference resolutions that gave autonomy to the Chinese Church, on the grounds that the funding for these Bishops did not come from China. In Africa the consistent policy was that Africans should not be diocesan bishops and, although there were indigenous assistant bishops in West Africa, this practice was not extended elsewhere on the continent. Indeed, several times during this period the CMS deliberately blocked the appointment of Africans as diocesan bishops while bemoaning the fact that it had taken so long to get Indian bishops. The importance of having a sympathetic bishop, or indeed a CMS missionary as bishop is highlighted by the problems that could occur when the bishop was less supportive, as was the case in Ceylon. Thus when Carpenter-Garnier, the Bishop of Colombo, retired in 1938 Cash sought to influence who would become the next bishop. He wrote to the CMS Mission Secretary in Ceylon stressing that, as a member of the nomination committee, he should see himself partly as representing the CMS Parent Committee.121 In reply Cash received details of the names of the candidates, even though at the time they were 121  Cash to Jackson, 21 March 1938, G/Y CE2. (‘personal and private’ to Jackson).

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being kept strictly confidential.122 Cash tried unsuccessfully to seek Lang’s help.123 He also wrote to various people in England to elicit support for his preferred candidate, being careful to say that he was not actually canvassing. His letters produced cables which were printed in the information about the candidates in Ceylon.124 His efforts were to no avail, and the ‘soundly catholic’ C. D. Horsley was duly elected.125 7 Conclusion The Anglican Communion today has member churches in more than 160 countries. Its development from the national Church of England to the present complex situation owes more to historical accident than to a developed ecclesiology.126 The Church Missionary Society played a significant part in this development. The CMS was, from its foundation, a Church society. Being an Evangelical in the Church of England was not straightforward in 1799 and as time went on this tension was to produce complicated ramifications. Cash, like Bardsley, Fox and Venn before him, recited the words ‘one Catholick and Apostolick Church’ at each Communion service. For Venn, the indigenous nature of the churches planted by CMS was paramount. With varying success Venn sought to accommodate the apostolic nature of the church, in the shape of its governance by bishops, by seeing the appointment of a bishop as the ‘crowning point of a mission’. This was in marked contrast to the more Catholic societies, the UMCA for example believed that a bishop should lead a mission from the start. In the twentieth century the reality of the Anglican Communion and the authority of the now pervasive Anglican bishops was a significant factor in every CMS mission. Fenn was arguing to maintain Evangelical influence by avoiding too close a participation in dioceses comprising other traditions. Two decades on, the founders of the BCMS similarly were seeking to maintain conservative Evangelical influence by refusing to work in a missionary society with people holding ‘liberal’ views. By the time of the CMS crisis over Ceylon, 122  Jackson to Cash, 11 April 1938, G/Y CE2. 123  Cash to Sargent, 6 May 1938, G/Y CE2. 124  See Cash to Archbishop of York, 5/7/1938, and Cash to The Master (sic) of Hertford College, Oxford, 5 July 1938, as well as the information on candidates, 8 July 1938, all in G/Y CE2. 125  Fr Talbot, CR, in information on candidates, 8 July 1938, all G/Y CE2. 126  The convoluted way that America’s first Anglican bishops were consecrated illustrates this. W. M. Jacob, The Making of the Anglican Church Worldwide (London: SPCK, 1997), pp. 62–71.

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the commitment to working with the broad Anglican Communion was such that, however painful, the CMS would not even consider withdrawing from the commitment to fully integrating into the emerging Anglican Communion the churches it had helped to plant. The process known as diocesanization was a given that would continue, not always as rapidly as in the early 1920s, but it was the logical and inevitable conclusion of decisions made at the turn of the century to work within the Anglican Communion. The fact was (and is) that being part of the Church of England and the emerging Anglican Communion necessarily implied working with those with whom you disagreed. Working together in a church with people with whom you have profound disagreements will at times be painful and at times will mean that they, rather than you, have the upper hand and their influence will prevail. The CMS/BCMS split showed that there would be no neat split should a particular group opt for division. The split itself was within conservative ranks, but it can be argued that the infighting resulted in a loss of influence for Evangelicals within the Church of England that lasted until the Keele congress of 1967. Fenn was correct in identifying the problems that would ensue for an Evangelical society: the CMS could not maintain its influence in every place where it had planted churches and inevitably bishops well outside the Evangelical fold would gain influence and control in some CMS areas. However, it is hard to see how Fenn’s approach could have avoided racially separate dioceses accompanied by a drift away from the Anglican Communion. One of the remarkable things about Stock’s vision, as expressed in the 1901 memorandum, is how accurately it mapped out what would eventually happen. Through Stock’s guidance, the option of pursuing a narrow Evangelical ecclesiology was rejected in favour of what could be described as the more catholic and apostolic approach of full integration into the Anglican Communion. While the CMS at the time of Stock would have been very reticent about the use of the word ‘catholic’, by the time of Cash the reality of being part of the broad Church of England, of the Anglican Communion and of the growing ecumenical and international community meant a wider perspective was possible. Thus Cash rejected talk of churches becoming independent: ‘It is misleading to speak of Churches gaining their independence. This term cuts across Catholic tradition and is apt to lead the younger Churches to forget their historic past in the Christian faith.’127 However, Cash did not have a particularly high view of the episcopate. Indeed he was always careful to state that diocesanization was not simply handing over to the authority of the bishop. Cash believed that the key difference between the CMS and the SPG in terms of their relation to overseas 127  Cash for CMS Commission, 28 October 1932, G/APc2/6.

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dioceses was that ‘the CMS seeks rather to act through the bishop and council, than through the bishop alone.’128 Under Cash the CMS still maintained many of Venn’s ideals; primarily it still wanted an indigenous church, but those indigenous churches would take their place within the Anglican Communion, which illustrates the principle outlined by Andrew Walls who speaks of a tension between an ‘indigenizing principle’ and a ‘pilgrim principle’ where Christianity’s universalizing tendency points people to things beyond their own culture.129 By 1939 Cash was arguing that young churches needed to root themselves in ‘historical Christianity’ and transcend national boundaries: ‘it is not enough for a Church to be indigenous, if by that is meant that it is merely national, for a Church in China, for instance, must recognize itself as a branch of the world-wide Catholic and Apostolic Church.’130

128   The Policy of the CMS on its Episcopal Side, Cash, December 1930, G/AP11, 1921–1937. See Chittleborough ‘Towards a Theology and Practice of the Bishop-in-Synod’, in Stephen W. Sykes (ed.), Authority in the Anglican Communion (Toronto: Anglican Book Centre, 1987), pp. 144–62 for a theological exploration of such an approach. 129  A. F. Walls, The Missionary Movement in Christian History (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis, 1996), p. 8. Similar ideas are also expressed by Bolaji Idowu, Towards an Indigenous Church (London: Oxford University Press, 1965), p. 11. 130  W. W. Cash, The Missionary Church: A Study in the Contribution of Modern Missions to Œcumenical Christianity (London: Church Missionary Society, 1939), p. 141.

Part 3 The African Search for an Anglican Via Media, 1890–2013

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Chapter 9

The Poverty of Anglican Prophecy and the Legacy of Arthur Shearly Cripps in Colonial Zimbabwe Thomas Mhuriro In his widely-read book Anglicanism, Stephen Neill notes that while the British Empire reflected the spread of Anglicanism in conjunction with imperial power, a clear distinction between the political and religious spheres could still be discerned. Indeed, in his discussion of the formation of the Province of Central Africa, to which the Zimbabwean Anglican Church belongs, Neill observed that the formation of the nation states of the Federation of Southern Rhodesia, Northern Rhodesia and Nyasaland preceded the formation of the Anglican Province that combined Anglican churches within these countries. The model promoted by local politicians for political, economic and social partnership between the white and black inhabitants of Zambia, Zimbabwe and Malawi after 1953 was one that the Church in Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe) was called to pursue by bringing blacks and whites together in the name of Christ. It was not, however, a model for which there were many precedents from the missionary era. Neill uses two important words in this context: ‘opportunity’ and ‘peril’ to highlight the kind of atmosphere that people in this part of the world had to appreciate as urgent.1 A great deal of care was needed in this task since such an intricate relationship could easily become something of an illusion. Prophetic voices calling the missionary church of nineteenthcentury Rhodesia to live out its Christian witness to the native population were few and far between, yet they did exist, perhaps most notably in the person of the Anglo-Catholic priest, Arthur Shearly Cripps (1869–1952), one of the most formative influences on the development of Anglicanism in Zimbabwe. By reexamining Cripps’s legacy, it is possible better to understand some of the ways in which African Christianity sought to fashion an ecclesiology that embraced indigenous culture rather than trying to obliterate it. That Cripps was an exception to the rule is to be regretted but should not detract from his significance to present-day African Anglican identity.

1  Stephen Neill, Anglicanism (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1958), p. 344.

© koninklijke brill nv, leiden, 2019 | doi:10.1163/9789004388680_011

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Arthur Shearly Cripps as an Anglican Prophet of His Time

To this day, the definitive biography of Cripps remains Douglas Steere’s God’s Irregular: Arthur Shearly Cripps.2 Steere’s focus on the activities of one missionary between 1901 and 1953 clearly documents Cripps’s resistance to colonial greed and his unpopularity among European settlers.3 A call to witness to an authentic Christian living was distinct in this missionary’s life. Of major significance to current developments is Cripps’s yearning for a peaceful resolution to the land question in colonial Rhodesia (which has escalated since independence and considerably since 2000).4 The issue of land expropriation in Zimbabwe can be viewed, at least from some perspectives, as involving the Anglican church and the state in an almost unprecedented and unhealthy partnership. In a controversial move, some members of the Anglican clergy queued for the land that was being doled out. The urgency of the land question in Zimbabwe was confirmed by the so-called ‘land invasions’, sanctioned by the ruling party and therefore the government. Cripps had tried to address this issue in the 1920s in his book An Africa For Africans which encouraged the settler state to be impartial on this sensitive matter.5 Cripps’s prophetic book was not taken seriously in Rhodesia which meant that a golden opportunity was lost. It sounded the alarm at a time when many Europeans were preoccupied with the conquest of the indigenous people without imagining that one day these conquered people would rise and claim what rightly belonged to them. An equitable and humane approach could have seen blacks and whites simply living as brothers and sisters and not as masters and slaves or rich and poor along racial lines. Perhaps, if his views had been adopted by the authorities then, the future Zimbabwe would have become a classic model of AngloAfrican partnership, both politically and religiously. Earlier in 1892 one British parliamentarian, Sir William Harcourt, had pointed out that Europeans had no rights whatsoever over the African natives, even though the popular talk of the so-called ‘sphere of influence’ was to be pursued to its logical conclusions in this part of the world:

2  D. V. Steere, God’s Irregular: Arthur Shearly Cripps: A Rhodesian Epic (London: SPCK, 1973). 3  Steere, God’s Irregular, p. 87. 4  Steere, God’s Irregular, p. 105. Though popular, this view is not a true reflection of the Zimbabwean land question that could be traced back to the 1890s. This is the reason why Anglican missionaries feature in the land distribution initiated by Cecil John Rhodes at the onset of the colonial era. The year 2000 simply witnessed the climax of discontent among many Zimbabweans, this time with more political manipulations of exaggerated proportions. 5  A. S. Cripps, An Africa For Africans (London: Longmans, 1927).

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A sphere of influence confers no right, no authority over the people; a sphere of influence confers no right or authority over the land of any kind … Every act of force you commit against a native within a sphere of influence is an unlawful assault; every acre of land you take is robbery; every native you kill is murder, because you have no right and authority against these men.6 Harcourt’s position was another expression of political and socio-economic discontent that blended well with Christian norms of sisterhood and brotherhood, and yet it was not taken into serious consideration during the colonisation of Zimbabwe. Racial prejudice was to dominate the day which fuelled tensions between Europeans and the indigenous people from the beginning. During the first half of the twentieth century, many Europeans could scarcely believe that one day they and their descendants would be forced by natives to give an account of all stolen property, including the land they so jealously guarded.7 Constitutional developments during the colonial era never accommodated the indigenous people. Those within the Anglican tradition who hold Cripps’ legacy in derision and still claim to be true Zimbabwean patriots make a mockery of God in this connection.8 Cripps, who lived in Zimbabwe from 1902 until his death in 1952, took a courageous moral position in his context when many self-styled Anglican patriots who seem to be taking Zimbabwe by storm today were not yet born. Failure to respect Cripps’ initiatives in the above connection simply proves the prevalence of a disconnected Anglican priesthood within the Zimbabwean context. Recently a bewildered observer of the developments in Zimbabwe between 2007 and 2012 commented: As a descendent of Arthur Shearly Cripps I strongly condemn Kunonga’s illegal seizure of the Shearly Cripps Shrine and all other Anglican Church

6  Cited in C. Palley, The Constitutional History and Law of Southern Rhodesia 1888–1965 With Special Reference to Imperial Control (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1966), pp. 12–13. The first chapter provides insights into the legal issues that were encountered by British colonialists as they tried to justify the politico-economic greedy that was prevalent then. 7  Ian Smith was on record for saying that no majority rule would happen, first in a thousand years and, later, not in his lifetime. Both positions proved to be mere rhetoric when Zimbabwe became independent in 1980 and Smith died in 2007. 8  On this, see Owen Sheers, ‘The illegal seizure by excommunicated Bishop Nolbert Kunonga of the Arthur Shearly Cripps Shrine in Chivhu, Zimbabwe’ at: http://www.solidaritypeace trust.org/ (accessed 8 August 2016).

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properties in Masvingo Province and call upon Kunonga9 to revoke his false claims. Given the nature of Cripps’ activist work – fighting for indigenous land rights, defending local people against colonial injustice, building the country’s first VD clinic for indigenous Zimbabweans – Kunonga’s actions in denying access to his shrine and inciting violence against the Anglican community are particularly sickening and perverse. Extraordinary though the actions of Kunonga and the police may seem they are also, unfortunately, all too indicative of the cronyism, corruption and injustice that have marred the ZANU PF regime in Zimbabwe for over the last ten years. Cripps strived all his life for equality and justice. When he died he left all his land to the local people who had lived and farmed on that land for many years. In the light of his work and his legacy it is particularly saddening that the kind of actions Cripps fought against during his time in colonial Southern Rhodesia should be echoed now by Kunonga in a post-colonial Zimbabwe.10 Many years after Cripps, a brutal war had to be fought in an attempt to resolve the land question in Zimbabwe. Yet Zimbabwe is still confronted by the land question. Unfortunately, some indigenous Anglican clergy had not learnt anything from the mistakes of the past that saw politicians and religious people celebrating a severely compromised partnership. In 1901 Cripps had come to a Rhodesia in which his Anglican predecessors, including George Wyndham Hamilton Knight-Bruce (1852–96), the pioneer Bishop of Mashonaland, who is discussed in more detail below, had done little to resist what might be referred to as the definitive conquest and ‘pacification’ of the indigenous population. Cripps simply could not accept that the conquest and subjugation of the African people in Rhodesia was the work of God without qualification. Much has been written about Cripps’s attitude towards the European occupation of Rhodesia. Some authorities make it clear that the missionaries were being used to cover up for Cecil John Rhodes’ imperialist motives, which meant that sometimes mission stations were built instead of forts: ‘With limited resources, Rhodes chose to consolidate the eastern border of the colony bearing his name with a line of missions instead of forts.’11 It has been observed that Cripps’s interest in Mashonaland was the result of 9   Kunonga is a former Anglican bishop of the Diocese of Harare who was excommunicated in 2007 and legally forced to relinquish church property in 2012. 10  Sheers, ‘The illegal seizure’. 11  N. E. Thomas, ‘Church and State in Zimbabwe’, Journal of State and Church 27 (1985), pp. 113–33, at p. 116.

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a passionate desire to atone for the atrocities that his European compatriots had committed in Rhodesia, especially during and after the wars of resistance in 1896–7. Indeed, it was the fact that his fellow countrymen could commit such atrocities without any sense of shame that prompted Cripps to become a missionary.12 Later, in An Africa For Africans, Cripps charged colonial Africa with living a lie.13 He was fearless when it came to castigating his fellow whites for abusing Africa: ‘From the point of view of the religion of Jesus, she [i.e. ‘Anglo-Africa’] lives a lie. From the point of view of Britain’s traditional passion against all repression, and Britain’s inherited zeal for liberty in self-development, she (Anglo-Africa) is a traitoress glorying in the shame of her own treason.’14 Cripps proved equally critical of his own Church on many issues.15 In 1903 his was a lone voice protesting against the resolutions that had been adopted by the Anglican Synod meeting in Salisbury (now Harare) where Africans were reduced to second class citizens in their motherland and their cultural norms were discarded by a synod that had made no significant attempts to understand the underlying socio-cultural values of the indigenous people.16 In 2011 I travelled to Chivhu (formerly Enkeldoorn), about a hundred kilometres south of Harare along the Beit Bridge road, to explore how the legend of Cripps continued to live in the minds of some people in Zimbabwe. There I met people who included Luke Mandizvidza, a non-Anglican born around 1928, who recalled how he used to visit Fr Cripps at Maronda Mashanu, where, together with other boys of his age, he was entertained by the missionary.17 Cripps’s church was the only place in those days where African locals could be assured of a free teaspoon of sugar. The very fact that a non-Anglican could be so touched to this day by an Anglican missionary who died more than half a century ago is a clear indication of Cripps’s fame. Mandizvidza felt that Cripps was the only missionary who could rightly claim to have been sent by God to Zimbabwe from Europe, since the others appeared to be little more than deceitful agents of the colonial establishment.18 12  D. E. Finn, ‘“Kambandakoto”: A Study of A. S. Cripps 1869–1952’, Rhodesiana 7 (1962), pp. 34–43, here p. 35. 13  Cripps, An Africa For Africans, p. 37. 14  Cripps, An Africa For Africans, p. 10. 15  Cripps, An Africa For Africans, p. 38. 16  W. E. Arnold, Here to Stay: The Story of the Anglican Church in Zimbabwe (Lewes: Book Guild, 1985), p. 37. 17  ‘The Five Wounds of Jesus’ in Shona: the name given to the place where Cripps’s church was built in the Chivhu area. 18  Interview with Luke Mandizvidza at a plot near Chivhu, 21 August 2011 (newly resettled indigenous farms/plots with title deeds not yet available).

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In Mhondoro-Ngezi, 162 kilometres southwest of Harare (Kadoma East), Dharu Gangandaza, whose family moved to the area from Maronda Mashanu sometime in the 1930s in response to Fr Cripps’s desire to ensure missionary work at St Oswald’s (Zimhindo) Mission, also attested to the priest’s popular standing.19 Cripps made no apology for his disgust at what the European settlers were doing in Rhodesia. One critical example of Cripps missionary approach was given by Gangandaza’s uncle who, together with others, had failed to pay taxes to the settler regime. These men were rounded up and forced to carry heavy logs to the Range Office, a distance of more than 300 kilometres to be covered over several days on foot and under a heavy load as a form of punishment. On meeting these men Cripps immediately took up their cause with the Native Commissioner at the Range Office who was supposedly responsible for upholding the interests of the indigenous population. When the latter refused to stop this abusive practice, Cripps was reported to have invoked the wrath of God through prayer against such brutality. Although there are no documented details of this event in the area in question, the Native Commissioner was reportedly killed by a buck a few days later, the death being popularly attributed to Cripps’ pious intervention.20 Although the historical accuracy and authenticity such stories could not be confirmed, it is clear that, among Mashonaland Africans, Cripps was perceived as a prophetic voice seeking not to condemn African ideals but to advance them and to challenge the civil authorities to be impartial as they engaged with the indigenous people. Another convincing testimony of Cripps’s theological understanding of the indigenous Africans in Rhodesia is given by W. R. Peaden who observes that ‘as early as 1902 the Revd A. S. Cripps saw that the Shona held firmly the belief that the spirits of the dead watch over the living. It should be possible by the grace of God to build upon these Mashona convictions a magnificent faith in the Communion of Saints.’21 Cripps’s respect for the religious world-views of those whom he served stood in stark contrast to the views of Knight-Bruce who had declared that there was no religion to talk

19  St Oswald’s Mission in Mhondoro-Ngezi has continued to grow. The present writer started secondary education at this institution in 1982. 20  Gangandaza’s account was given during an interview conducted on 23 August 2011 at Village 6, Manyoni Resettlement, in Mhondoro-Ngezi (also known as Kadoma East). Oral tradition seems to be a victim of nostalgia or the romanticisation of facts. The exact date of the establishment of St Oswald’s in Mhondoro-Ngezi could not be ascertained owing to a mix-up of files and the troubled state of the Anglican church in Harare during 2011. 21  W. R. Peaden, ‘Aspects of the Church And Its Political Involvement In Southern Rhodesia, 1959–1972’, Zambezia 7 (1979), pp. 191–210, here pp. 191–2.

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about among the Shonas of Rhodesia.22 Cripps also endeared himself to the Shona by his unwillingness to cooperate with the colonial power structures. Stephen Hayes notes that Cripps walked throughout the district, and refused lifts if offered, sharing his food and clothes with the poor. He fought with the British South Africa Company over its plans to deprive the black population of what little land was left to them, and lived an austere and simple life as one of the people. He raised money to buy his own farms where land-hungry Africans could settle, and continually urged the bishops and synods of the Diocese of Mashonaland to take the concerns of their African flock more seriously.23 As a missionary, Cripps chose the part of the poor and oppressed and lived among them, but in so doing he remained isolated from both church and state. He was a prophet who was marginalised during his time but vindicated by history. 2

Cripps and George Knight-Bruce

A different theology of empire emerges in the Anglican pioneers who led the fledging church in Rhodesia. Particularly noteworthy is George Wyndham Hamilton Knight-Bruce, first Bishop of Mashonaland from 1891.24 KnightBruce was born in 1852 and graduated from Merton College, Oxford in 1876 and was ordained a year later. In 1886 he was appointed the third Bishop of Bloemfontein in the Orange Free State, South Africa, where he sought funding from the SPG to fund an expedition into Mashonaland through Matabeleland.25 It was Knight-Bruce who in 1890, when the Pioneer Column organised by Cecil John Rhodes marched into Mashonaland to colonize it, seconded Anglican priests to the Column as chaplains.26 According to Kevin 22  G. W. H. Knight-Bruce, Journals of the Mashonaland Mission 1888 To 1892 (London: SPG, 1893), esp. p. 6. 23  S. Hayes, ‘Cripps, Arthur Shearly 1869 to 1952 Anglican Zimbabwe’, Dictionary of African Christian Biography at: http://www.dacb.org/stories/zimbabwe/cripps_arthur.html (accessed 22 February 2016). 24   See E. I. Carlyle, ‘Bruce, George Wyndham Hamilton Knight- (1852–1896)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004); online at http:// ezproxy-prd.bodleian.ox.ac.uk:2167/view/article/3731 (accessed 9 August 2016). 25   Classified Digest of the Records of the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts 1701–1892 (London: SPG, 1893), p. 363. 26   Classified Digest, p. 364.

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Ward, Rhodes’ pioneers worked hand-in-glove with Knight-Bruce who ‘had a special place in the hierarchy of the colonial regime’.27 He is reported as having been involved in the intimidation of a settler named Wood to prevent him from meddling in Matabeleland, thereby serving to protect Rhodes’ interests.28 At the time there was no distinction between Mashonaland and Matabeleland as Lobengula claimed to be the sovereign of both, which meant that anybody venturing into Mashonaland had to be cleared by the Matabele king. Steven Edgington has raised the question of why the British South Africa Company was so generous to the missionaries, Anglican and others.29 Rhodes was aware that any resistance to his ambition to move deeper into Central Africa would be costly and was therefore keen to appease potential critics, including missionaries such as Bishop Knight-Bruce, who were unable to approve of some clauses in the Rudd Concession.30 This document was eventually used to colonize Zimbabwe because, despite the impression that he had been given verbally, Lobengula had signed an agreement to the effect that Rhodes could take over everything as the new owner of the country. It was this fraudulent document that Christian missionaries went on to baptise through their unwavering support for the British South Africa Company (BSAC). Rhodes was also aware of the historical connection between the Tory Party and the Church of England and assumed that generosity to the Anglican missionaries would endear him to members of Lord Salisbury’s Unionist administration in Britain and clothe his ambitions with a Christian veneer.31 Mashingaidze observes that Rhodes needed missionaries to help cover up his commercial interests.32 Similarly, Edgington concludes that ‘The missionaries were always part of the political equation for Rhodes, both locally in southern Africa and in the larger imperial arena.’33 The complicity of Anglican clergy in 27  Kevin Ward, A History of Global Anglicanism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006), p. 156. 28  A. Keepel-Jones, Rhodes and Rhodesia: The White Conquest of Zimbabwe 1884–1902 (Pietermaritzburg: University of Natal Press, 1983), p. 73. Wood is just one of the many concession-seekers who had managed to entice Lobengula before Rhodes. 29  S. D. Edgington, ‘Economic and Social Dimensions of Mission Farms in Mashonaland Highveld, 1890–1939’, PhD Thesis, University of California, Los Angeles, 1996, p. 30. 30  Edgington, ‘Economic and Social Dimensions’, p. 30. Knight-Bruce seems to have expressed some reservations in terms of supporting Rhodes, but it is clear that his opposition was tied to the clause in the Rudd Concession that would see Lobengula being given some firearms (see p. 31n). It was not necessarily a definitive moral stance against Rhodes. 31  Edgington, ‘Economic and Social Dimensions’, p. 31. 32  E. K. Mashingaidze, ‘Christian Missions in Mashonaland, Southern Rhodesia, 1890–1930’, DPhil, University of York, 1973, p. 61. 33  Edgington, ‘Economic and Social Dimensions’, p. 32.

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the colonization of what is now Zimbabwe is indisputable. An Anglican priest, Francis Balfour, presided over the ceremony to mark the formal occupation of Mashonaland by Europeans in September 1890.34 In early 1891 the Church of the Province of South Africa held a synod at which Knight-Bruce was formally asked to take over the newly created Diocese of Mashonaland.35 By July of that year Balfour was ready to begin his missionary activities among the Mashona of Zimbabwe, but the intersection of religion and politics was never far away and the cost of resistance for the indigenous population between 1891 and 1897 was high.36 David Chanaiwa notes that Knight-Bruce ‘highly recommended’ the people who tricked Lobengula into signing a treaty that surrendered indigenous sovereignty to the BSAC.37 He includes Knight-Bruce among those who provided Lobengula with ‘inaccurate and conspiratorial information’, together with such missionaries as John Moffat, Charles D. Helm, Sir Hercules Robinson and Sir Sidney Shippard of the London Missionary Society (LMS).38 Knight-Bruce accompanied the pioneer Administrator, Dr Leander Star Jameson, when he marched to colonize Matabeleland in 1893. When the British public expressed moral outrage concerning the conquest of the Matabele, missionaries provided the much-needed ideological justification thereby helping to neutralize criticism, especially from the ‘Aborigines Protection Society’. Chanaiwa is blunt in his assessment that the missionaries were unconcerned with any humanitarian, let alone Christian, object.39 Other authorities, however, are more generous when it comes to interpreting the position of the Anglican church in the 1890s. According to William Arnold, Knight-Bruce had a passion for the evangelization of natives. In 1886 he had received permission from Lobengula to visit Mashonaland, a journey supported by ‘state officials, traders and others’ including ‘the great hunter and traveller, F. C. Selous’.40 While missionary work may have been the main objective, it is easy to see why state officials and others were interested in Knight-Bruce’s mission to Mashonaland. In Matabeleland he was hosted by LMS missionaries, including the Rev. Charles D. Helm at Hope Fountain and 34  J. Weller and J. Linden, Mainstream Christianity to 1980 in Malawi, Zambia and Zimbabwe (Gweru, Zimbabwe: Mambo Press,1984), p. 66. 35   Classified Digest, p. 365. 36  Edgington, ‘Economic and Social Dimensions’, p. 32. 37  D. Chanaiwa, The Occupation of Southern Rhodesia: A study of economic imperialism (Nairobi: East African Publishing House, 1981), p. 31. 38  Chanaiwa, The Occupation of Southern Rhodesia, p. 131. 39  Chanaiwa, The Occupation of Southern Rhodesia, p. 179. 40  Arnold, Here to Stay, p. 8.

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the Rev. Bowen Rees at Inyati.41 While Chanaiwa views these missionaries as conspirators in the colonisation of Rhodesia,42 Arnold suggests that the presence of Knight-Bruce who ‘was no agent of imperial expansionism’ at the same time as Sir Sydney Shippard (administrator of Bechuanaland), Major Goold-Adams (Bechuanaland Protectorate Police), and Charles D. Rudd (Rhodes’ emissary) who were going to discuss the Rudd Concession, was purely coincidental.43 Yet in this volatile politico-economic context KnightBruce was bold enough to recommend ‘Mr Rhodes, Mr Rudd and Mr Maguire’ to Lobengula as friends, and the only individuals who should be allowed into Mashonaland.44 This implies an awareness of other contenders whom he wanted to discredit by recommending his fellow Britons. Arnold’s uncritical reading of this episode fails to take account of the extent to which missionary work relied on military might and money. His attempt to distinguish between missionary and coloniser, which disregards Knight-Bruce’s support for Rhodes’ Pioneer Column, is little more than an effort to clear the name of the Anglican church.45 Although she makes a distinction between the missionary and the imperialist in her comparison of Knight-Bruce with Rhodes, Pamela Welch nevertheless shows that the creation of the Diocese of Mashonaland was based more on political expediency than on ecclesiastical need.46 The invasion of Mashonaland was an indirect way of disproving Lobengula’s claims to that part of the country, and while the political will to absorb Mashonaland was particularly strong in 1890, there had been an earlier attempt in 1874 and in turn Knight-Bruce had scouted the land in 1888.47 According to Welch, however, Knight-Bruce was never in favour of colonialism in Mashonaland, in part because missionary work in Mashonaland did not require ‘the BSA Company and its settlers, or even imperial protection’.48 Furthermore, white settlers were considered to suffer from moral weaknesses that disqualified them from being able to bring civilisation to the natives. Basing her argument on a number of documentary sources, Welch also notes accounts of earlier missionary frustration in seeking to evangelize the region while powerful rulers such as 41  Arnold, Here to Stay, p. 9. 42  Chanaiwa, The Occupation of Southern Rhodesia, p. 131. 43  Arnold, Here to Stay, p. 9. 44  Arnold, Here to Stay, p. 11. 45  Arnold, Here to Stay, p. 12. 46  P. Welch, Church and Settler in Colonial Zimbabwe: A study in the History of the Anglican Diocese of Mashonaland/Southern Rhodesia, 1890–1925 (Leiden: Brill, 2008), p. 6. 47  Welch, Church and Settler, p. 7. 48  Welch, Church and Settler, p. 9.

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Lobengula were in charge.49 In addition, Knight-Bruce himself did not take kindly to the backwardness of the Mashona: To go to something more important – what is the religion of the Mashona? It is very hard to say that they have any. I have talked to them about God, and His sending them their crops and food, and they will agree and say He lives in heaven; and then they will tell you soon afterwards that they had a god once, but the Matabele drove him away.50 In his account of the colonisation of Rhodesia, Terrence O. Ranger shows how it was marked by the wanton destruction not only of the religious but also of the politico-economic structures of the Ndebele and Shona peoples.51 In detailing the causes of the 1896–7 uprising that caught both settlers and missionaries by surprise, he observes how both European settlers and missionaries deceived themselves about the mind-set of the indigenous population, viewing the Shona as a disunited people without a usable past on which to anchor cultural values and without religion of any sort. Despite evidence suggesting a gradual coexistence between the Shona and Ndebele based on the tributary status of many conquered chiefs to Lobengula, there was a general belief that the Shona were on the verge of extinction owing to Matabele raids and brutality. Shona chiefs were either able to fortify their villages in order to repel enemies or were simply not affected by the Ndebele raids.52 Conversely, the prevailing colonial view of the Ndebele was that they would welcome British rule after the defeat of the despotic Lobengula.53 However, colonization among the Ndebele displayed little respect for the indigenous culture. As Ranger writes, ‘Before 1896 the Ndebele state had been in ruins; its white rulers had broken up all its institutions; confiscated all Ndebele land and nearly all Ndebele cattle; disregarded every Ndebele political authority’.54 The indigenous population were perceived to be savages in need of being civilised and if this was not possible, they had to be wiped off the face of the earth.55 By failing to challenge 49  Welch, Church and Settler, p. 10. 50  Knight-Bruce, Journals, p. 6. 51  T. O. Ranger, Revolt in Southern Rhodesia, 1896–7 (London: Heinemann, 1967). 52  Ranger, Revolt, pp. 17–33. 53  Ranger, Revolt, p. 2. 54  T. O. Ranger, ‘Connexions between “Primary Resistance” Movements and Modern Mass Nationalism In East and Central Africa. Part I’, Journal of African History 9:3 (1968), pp. 437–53, here p. 442. 55  Richard Hodder-Williams, White Farmers in Rhodesia, 1890–1965: A History of the Marandellas District (London: Macmillan, 1983), p. 42. His discussion of the Shona

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their fellow British colonialists Anglican missionaries were necessarily complicit in the process with few expressing any real moral outrage against white perpetrators of violence. Cecil John Rhodes gave significant financial support to the Anglican church, pledging £500 annually, over a seven year period.56 Missionary work was linked to the grand colonial project. It is no surprise that the Anglican church remained remarkably silent about the many atrocities of the period.57 As Carol Summers notes, it was only Douglas Pelly, a newly arrived Anglican missionary from England, who tried to raise objections to the war against the Ndebele in 1893, but this was dismissed by Frederick Courtney Selous on the basis of Pelly’s supposed ignorance of the facts on the ground.58 In contrast, KnightBruce, faced with the question of the future of the Ndebele state, did little to discourage white settlers from going to war with the indigenous people, offering only a neutral statement to the effect that war was the fastest option although it could not guarantee the desired results.59 Before Cripps’ arrival it was proving a challenge for the Shona and Ndebele to distinguish between the missionary and the coloniser. Many missionaries received large tracts of land from Rhodes, as is evidenced by a document entitled ‘Church Farms, 1892’, the beneficiary of which was Douglas Pelly. A letter dated 16 July 1892 makes reference to five farms, while another dated 22 November from the BSAC indicates that the Company was very much prepared to grant more land to the Church of England.60 According to Keppel-Jones, up to twenty-five such farms were involved, with Knight-Bruce justifying their acquisition on the grounds that they could be given back to the dispossessed Mashona.61 Yet the indigenous people had to engage the Europeans in a bloody war to reclaim the land. Although Knight-Bruce’s conscience was not at ease with Rhodes’ parcelling out of stolen land, he was nevertheless, as Welch notes, unwittingly ‘drawn into the web, visiting the king with Shippard and so lending

rebellion makes reference to some European fighters’ insensitivity to abstract justice and the Europeans’ widespread bitterness against the Africans. 56  Knight-Bruce, Journals, p. 13. 57  Ranger does indicate that he is aware of any significant voices of protest coming especially from Anglican missionary circles. 58  C. Summers, From Civilisation to Segregation: Social Ideals and Social Control in Southern Rhodesia (Athens, OH: Ohio University Press, 1994), p. 29. 59  Summers, From Civilisation, p. 32. 60  National Archives, Zimbabwe, ANG 1/1/1. 61  Arthur Keppel-Jones, Rhodes and Rhodesia: the white conquest of Zimbabwe 1884–1902 (Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1983), pp. 416–17.

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his credibility to Rhodes’ negotiations’.62 Although Knight-Bruce and Shippard both told Lobengula that they had nothing to do with the BSAC, they still lent their support to the fraudulent acquisition of the Rudd Concession. Although Welch suggests that Knight-Bruce’s lack of enthusiasm for the BSAC reveals criticism of Rhodes, it would seem that the only significant objection raised by the bishop was first qualified, and then withdrawn completely.63 Effectively, Knight-Bruce became an agent of Rhodes and therefore a proponent of imperialism who went on to promote the BSAC both in Africa and abroad. This may help to explain Rhodes’ generosity to the Anglican church when it came to the distribution of stolen land. It seems unavoidable to conclude that the Anglican church had been enticed into appreciating the logic of imperial conquest and was consequently complicit in the promotion of wanton capitalism in Rhodesia. Missionaries were being deliberately turned into defenders of a racially and elitist economic order. Carol Summers’ view that Rhodes’ pioneers had no clear-cut strategy for improving the lives of the indigenous population and so relied, from the beginning, ‘on blunt, undisguised force’, only accentuates this concern.64 3

Racism and Segregation within the Discourse of the Theology of Empire

It remains a matter of theological concern that the Church of England has largely refrained from addressing the tensions that stem from the negative consequences of the first few years of the colonisation of Rhodesia, which, according to Kinloch, ‘typifies the colonial type of society’. [It] was founded as a British colony in the late nineteenth century by an external, migrant elite with exploitive motives and accompanying military resources. Intergroup contact was generally negative and conflictridden, as the invading colonists subordinated the indigenous population, expropriated their land, and pressured them into forced labour. They proceeded to impose a system of institutionalized racism, legitimized by a

62  Welch, Church and Settler, p. 10. See also B. Sundkler and C. Steed, A History of the Church in Africa (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), p. 450. 63  Welch, Church and Settler, pp. 11–12. 64  Summers, From Civilisation, p. 14.

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broad range of cultural and racial stereotypes, subject to dynamic forms of competition, involving economic and political change.65 At the same time, it is important to ask ‘whether Africans were so ignorant of the different roles and life-styles of the settlers, officials and missionaries, as not to make a distinction between them’.66 From a cultural point of view, it was not easy to see at what point the church and its European membership went separate ways, especially when settlers could easily become missionaries and vice versa. Similarly, missionaries were often forced by the racial prejudices of settlers to minister to them separately from the Africans.67 The very fact that missionaries continued in such compromised circumstances suggests some degree of sympathy for the settlers’ racist cause. Although Friday M. Mbon thinks that the religious disposition of many African people made it easier for them to adopt Christianity without the need for foreign missionaries to rely on force, this situation seems alien to the situation in Rhodesia.68 Given this background it is important to ask how matters changed after Rhodesian Africans began to subscribe to Anglicanism.69 Andrew Porter has shown that in the late eighteenth century LMS missionaries were being instructed to respect the uniqueness and individuality of the cultures they were intent on evangelizing and were to refrain from turning their converts into English replicas.70 Such attitudes were markedly different in colonial Rhodesia. One Anglican missionary admitted to Cripps that his work had been shaped by the influence of prejudices against the indigenous population, which he came to regret after a period of critical introspection.71 Michael Lapsley of the Society of the Sacred Mission (SSM) also addresses the motivations of Anglican missionaries in an Anglo-Zimbabwean context. Although he focuses in the Anglican church in Rhodesia from 1964 to 1980, he remains preoccupied with white Anglicans seeing the Anglican church as almost ancillary to the 65  G. C. Kinloch, ‘Changing Racial Attitudes in Zimbabwe: Colonial/Post-Colonial Dynamics’, Journal of Black Studies 34:2 (2003), pp. 250–71, here p. 251. 66  Renison Muchiri Githige, ‘The Mission State Relationship in Colonial Kenya: A Summary’, Journal of Religion in Africa 13:2 (1982), pp. 110–25, here p. 110. 67  Githige, ‘The Mission State’, pp. 111–12. 68  F. M. Mbon, ‘Response to Christianity in Pre-colonial and Colonial Africa: Some Ulterior Motives’, Mission Studies 4:1 (1987), pp. 42–54, 46. 69  See Peter Hinchliff, The Anglican Church in South Africa (London: Darton, Longman & Todd, 1963), p. 152. 70  Andrew Porter, Cultural Imperialism and Missionary Enterprise (Cambridge: North Atlantic Missionary Project, Position Paper Number 7, 1997), p. 12. 71  T. O. Ranger, ‘Literature and Political Economy: Arthur Shearly Cripps and the Makoni Labour Crisis of 1911’, Journal of Southern African Studies 9:1 (1982), pp. 33–53, here p. 34.

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state: indigenous voices are little more than an appendix to the historical white discourse.72 Most missionaries were not trained in inculturation as a missionary methodology. It is also important to note that some Africans might have been attracted to Anglicanism simply because of its close ties to colonialism. As Ward writes, ‘If Christianity and “power” (political/educational/cultural) went together, then Anglicanism was a form of Christianity which had its attractions for those whose lives were dominated or circumscribed by the colonial reality.’73 In a situation where freedom and dignity had been severely compromised through violent conquest, and where Africans were often viewed as ‘children’ and therefore in need of guidance from the missionaries, this makes clear sense.74 4

Cripps’ African Theology

This section outlines the differences between Cripps and Edward Paget (1886– 1971), who was Bishop of Southern Rhodesia from 1925 to 1957 (the diocese being renamed Mashonaland in 1952), and became the first Archbishop of Central Africa in 1955. Paget had significant exposure to Cripps’ work. From the onset, it is clear that in Cripps’ context the issue of European domination over the indigenous Africans took centre stage and it was difficult to imagine the day when the tables would be turned. The Anglican church had a real challenge on its doorstep in which, as we have shown, Cripps’ prophetic voice was diplomatically, if not officially, silenced. It is important to return to his work which challenges the sort of theology of empire within the Southern African context that bishop Edward Paget wanted to defend.75 For Paget, racism was prevalent only in South Africa, not in Rhodesia.76 It is difficult for us to assume that Bishop Paget was not aware of what was happening or that he had not 72  Michael Lapsley, Neutrality Or Co-option? Anglican Church and State from 1964 until the Independence of Zimbabwe (Gweru, Zimbabwe: Mambo, 1986), p. 9. 73  Ward, A History Of Global Anglicanism, p. 3. 74  Ward, A History Of Global Anglicanism, p. 6. 75  See, for instance, A. S. Cripps, An Africa for Africans: A plea on behalf of territorial segregation areas and their freedom in a South African colony (London: Longmans, 1927). See also T. O. Ranger, ‘ “Taking on the Missionary’s Task”: African Spirituality and the Mission Churches of Manicaland in the 1930s’, Journal of Religion in Africa 29:2 (1999), pp. 175–205, here pp. 187–8. 76  See letter of 31 July 1926 to unnamed correspondent, Witwatersrand University Library Archives, AB742, no.11. This collection is under the title, ‘Original Collection of letters for or by African Bishops’. It should be noted that ‘African’ refers to European bishops working in Africa.

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come across any incident of racial prejudice within the Rhodesian context in the way that Cripps had. In the first chapter of Africa for Africans, Cripps sets the strong moral tone of his argument. The key term in this connection is ‘soul-rot’, which is used to express the main theme of one human race oppressing another.77 Cripps’ argument cuts right through to the core of the problem being advanced, especially when the whole enterprise is premised on the equation of Christianity and civilisation against the background of barbaric atrocities within the Southern African context. Cripps makes reference to Rhodes’ bequest that saw young men of English and Dutch descent in Southern Africa being accorded opportunities to study at Oxford University. Cripps observes a fascinating irony in this connection in that the young men in question, the future leaders of Southern Africa, were sent to study in an atmosphere which he describes as ‘free and idealistic’, in marked contrast to the one that obtained in South Africa that was nowhere near freedom and idealism:78 ‘My own conclusion tends to be decisive that the prevalent atmosphere of South Africa is neither free nor idealistic, in the sense in which in our English Mother Country we have been taught to understand those words.’79 In Africa for Africans, Cripps is concerned with racial harmony in South Africa (inclusive of the now Zimbabwe) that he sees lacking and yet premised on claims that people preferred to call Christian and therefore civilised. He sees the partnership between church and state in the context in question as one that had agreed on the principle of segregation on the basis of race which meant an agreement characterized by severe contradictions in terms of values such as human dignity.80 In addition, Cripps observed that even the understanding of democracy was distorted because, in the context of British rule in Southern Africa, that term came to mean very few whites ruling ‘a vast majority’ of blacks in their own interests.81 Racial segregation could not be understood as promoting the cause of civilisation or any Christian principles. As Cripps observed: ‘Church and State for the most part seem to agree in ignoring the inconsistencies of a peace that is no peace in their overlapping provinces.’ The interests of both church and state were equally ‘shallowly conceived and short-sightedly estimated’.82 It is the same context he speaks of being led by ‘lying priests and false prophets’ 77  Cripps, Africa for Africans, p. 2: ‘soul-rot in a servile atmosphere’. 78  Cripps, Africa for Africans, p. 3. 79  Cripps, Africa for Africans, p. 5. 80  Cripps, Africa for Africans, p. 5. 81  Cripps, Africa for Africans, p. 11. 82  Cripps, Africa for Africans, p. 5.

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masquerading as Church leaders.83 He goes on to devote a whole chapter to the question of whether blacks and whites were equal in any way.84 In this chapter Cripps reviews a work by Peter Nielsen, who became the Native Commissioner of Mashonaland and who had become an expert in native culture.85 Of major significance in this review is the fact that Cripps sees Nielsen as an optimist when it comes to the African. Cripps writes of Nielsen: ‘He is a devotee of the New Learning: he is out to teach his fellow European to treat his African contemporary not as a slave nor as a child, nor yet as a bother in the house, but as a man. The Native can in fairness demand no more, the whites can in fairness yield no less’.86 Cripps’s argument is that ontological accidents, and not essences, had been allowed to seal the fate of Africans within the colonial framework in which Anglican Christianity was taking root. The fact that no indigenous African became bishop of a diocese within the territory of the future Zimbabwe in one hundred years is a historical indictment with serious religious, political and anthropological implications. Kenneth Skelton, the Bishop of Matabeleland, did his best to advance the cause of the indigenous people in a Rhodesia that was hostile to such moves, but Skelton returned to England in the early 1970s without having achieved much in terms of transforming the system. This fact calls into question the purported success of Anglican missionary work in this period advanced by such writers as Arnold and Welch. Writing a century after the initial colonisation of Zimbabwe, Arnold observes that it was only following independence that the Anglican church was characterized by two principal shifts. First, the Anglican church – like the nation – pursued the indigenization of its leadership. Second, it demonstrated a move towards maturity by allowing local clergy to take control of the spiritual destiny of their fellow Zimbabweans at the episcopal level.87 Before independence, white people, mostly of British origin, were the major players while blacks constituted the ancillary staff. The cathedrals in Nairobi, in Kenya, and Salisbury (Harare) in Southern Rhodesia, were often seen as symbols of colonial domination.88 83  Cripps, Africa for Africans, p. 12. 84  Cripps, Africa for Africans, pp. 15–23. 85  Cripps, Africa for Africans, p. 17. See Peter Nielsen, The Black Man’s Place in South Africa (Cape Town: Juta & Co, 1922). See also Diana Jeater, ‘Imagining Africans: Scholarship, Fantasy, and Science in Colonial Administration, 1920s Southern Rhodesia’, The International Journal of African Historical Studies 38:1 (2005), pp. 1–26. 86  Cripps, Africa for Africans, p. 21. 87  Arnold, Here To Stay, p. 1. 88  See Stephen Sykes, ‘The Anglican Character’, in Ian Bunting (ed.), Celebrating the Anglican Way (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1996), pp. 21–32.

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Although some authors note that in translations the God of Jesus Christ is the same as that known among the Shona as Mwari and among the Ndebele as Unkulunkulu. More generally, some have claimed that ‘Africans see the universe as created by the Supreme Being. This Being is the same as the Christian God and is known by various names in Africa. These names were adopted by Christians when translating the name of God into African languages.’89 Nevertheless, many missionaries, instead of cultivating theological wisdom among the indigenous people of Rhodesia, embarked on a systematic assault on traditional religious convictions, favouring instead the religious thought forms and categories of the Europeans, which served to compromise the prophetic role of the Church. The Shona and Ndebele had no obligation to associate whiteness (as a European derivative) with God. Then Cripps entered the Zimbabwean scene to proclaim a different message. His was a prophetic message that brought hope to many people of Zimbabwe and challenged all to see things in a different light. 5 Conclusion It is clear that Christians could be challenged to distinguish between oppressive forms of Christianity and the Christianity that serves the people of God. Cripps was interested in living his faith in ways that could help the people of Zimbabwe map their own spiritual destiny, while some of his fellow bishops were interested in supporting the colonial state of Rhodesia that was oppressive. The available evidence requires us to single out Cripps and to compare him with the bishops and other leaders of his time. As we have shown, certain bishops served a church that sang eulogies on behalf of the state, while at the same time, the people of God were being sacrificed on the altar of secular interests. Cripps left a legacy of Anglican prophecy that did not meet with many followers. Our contention is simply that unless prophetic views such as those attributed to Cripps are taken seriously by the Anglican church in Zimbabwe, Christianity will never have a far-reaching impact and will never serve the poor.

89  Emeka C. Ekeke, ‘African Traditional Religion: A Conceptual and Philosophical Analysis’, Lumina 22:2 (2011). E-journal at: http://lumina.hnu.edu.ph/articles/(5)ekekeOct11.pdf (accessed 29 February 2016).

Chapter 10

The Role of the Invisible but Visible Women in the 1913 Kikuyu Conference Esther Mombo 1 Introduction In 2013 the National Council of Kenya appointed the first woman, the Rev. Canon Rosemary Mbogo, an Anglican priest and Provincial Secretary of the Anglican Church of Kenya, as chairperson of the Council, exactly one hundred years after a woman (Isabelle Scott) was the first to take Holy Communion at the Kikuyu Missionary Conference of 1913. Despite the fact that this act was in itself controversial, there remains a dearth of information about the role of women in the African ecumenical movement. The engagement of women in missions in Africa is a story that is beginning to unfold through the growing literature on the roles that women in mission work played in establishing the church in Africa.1 For East Africa, and especially Kenya, however, there is still a dearth of information on the roles of women missionaries and African women in the Ecumenical Movement. This chapter is an attempt to remedy the deficiency. From the 1850s onwards, growing numbers of women missionaries arrived in Africa with the specially designated task of working with native women in areas ranging from evangelism and education to home and family life and medicine. Almost all Protestant mission societies had official publications, magazines, and even books which discussed at length the work of women missionaries; their letters and reports to the various sending societies contain rich insights into their significant contribution to the foundations of mission. During the nineteenth century Christianity in most African countries functioned within two overarching realities. In the background was the allpervading reality of colonialism, but at least as significant was the missionary 1  See especially, Dana Roberts, American Women in Missions: A Social History of their Thought and Practice (Macon, GA: Mercer University, 1996); Fiona Bowie, Deborah Kirkwood and Shirley Ardener, Women and Missions Past and Present: Anthropological and Historical Perceptions (Oxford: Berg, 1993); Elizabeth Isichei, A History of Christianity in Africa: From Antiquity to the Present (London: SPCK, 1995); Tabitha Kanogo, African Womanhood in Colonial Kenya, 1900–1950 (Oxford: James Currey, 2005).

© koninklijke brill nv, leiden, 2019 | doi:10.1163/9789004388680_012

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movement which formed and executed the agenda of Protestant Christianity. Most mission societies functioned autonomously, except for loose ‘comity’ arrangements (sometimes termed ‘spheres of influence’) which were intended to avoid rivalry and competition between different societies in certain areas.2 It is against this background that this chapter discusses the role of women in the early missionary conferences, with a particular focus on that held at Kikuyu in 1913. 2

Women in the Pre-Kikuyu 1913 Conference

In the different meetings that occurred prior to 1913, little is recorded about the presence of women in any deliberations. A series of meetings took place across the region between 1908 and 1911, involving either a dedicated conference of all missionary agencies in a particular region or a meeting of members of a single missionary agency that extended its invitation to neighbouring missionaries. At a 1908 meeting at Maseno one topic of discussion was the rivalry between the different mission agencies that had established themselves around Kisumu following the completion of the railway line from Mombasa to Kampala. Despite the rivalry over territory, the different missionary groups had certain concerns in common, not least acquiring knowledge of local languages and translation of the Bible and other written materials they were using into a comprehensible form. Although women missionaries are known to have been involved in the work of translation, however, there is no information about this in published conference reports. A similar dearth of information on the role of women is evident for reports from the 1908 and 1909 meetings at Kijabe. The former was dominated by representatives of the Africa Inland Mission (AIM), but also included John J. Willis, an Anglican CMS missionary from Kavirondo, and Drs Henry Scott and John Arthur of the Church of Scotland mission (CSM). At this conference a wish was expressed ‘to encourage the growth of what is common between the different branches of the church of Christ’, rather than each mission impressing on the young African church forms of worship and doctrines peculiar to themselves.3 The following year’s conference at Kijabe adopted a resolution calling for the development and organization of a united self-governing, self-supporting and self-extending native church as the ideal of the missionary work.4 In neither 2  Stephen Neill, Christian Missions (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1964), p. 541. 3  M. G. Capon, Towards Church Unity in Kenya (Nairobi: Christian Council of Kenya, 1962). 4  Capon, Towards Church Unity, p. 11.

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case was there any mention of women and their despite the fact that women missionaries were already working extensively with women on issues of education, health, and evangelism. A fourth conference at Nairobi in 1910, which was attended by representatives from different missionary organizations in the country at the time, heard a paper by Archdeacon Willis on ‘The desirability of a single Native Church in British East Africa’. Willis urged that such a church must be united, selfsupporting and self-propagating. It would adhere to the Holy Scriptures, accept the Nicene and Apostles’ creeds and should have a regularly ordained and properly safeguarded ministry.5 A fifth conference in February 1911 ended in a deadlock. Once again, women do not seem to have been included in the meetings, or if they were, their voices are muted. 3

Kikuyu 1913

The Kikuyu Conference took place over four days in July 1913. Present were representatives of the Church Missionary Society, the Church of Scotland Mission, the Methodist Mission, the African Inland Mission, the Friends Africa Industrial Mission, the German Lutherans, the Seventh Day Adventists, Gospel Mission Society and the Nilotic Mission. The aim of the conference was to work out unifying arrangements for the mission agencies in relation to their work in East Africa. It was hoped that the conference would promote a federation of missions and help foster a united native church.6 Sixty people attended the meeting, both men and women, but since the latter were not official delegates but attending as wives or honorary missionaries it is hard to identify many of them. While there are details of the men and the roles they played in their respective mission agencies, there are no details of the women or what they did. Gavin White does provide names of some of the women who attended, including Madge Hurst, newly arrived in Africa and waiting to be married to Fred Morris of the Congo, the teacher Florence Dead, who had become a talented linguist in the Giriama tongue, Dinah Verbi, a former cotton weaver from England, and Sibella Burns, one of the three sisters who had sailed to Africa in 1892 as honorary missionaries and whose sister was the wife of Harry Leaky.

5  Capon, Towards Church Unity, p. 11. 6  E. N. Wanyoike, An African Pastor: The life and work of the Rev. Wanyoike Kamawe 1888–1970 (Nairobi: East African Publishing House, 1974), p. 110.

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Other women mentioned include Hilda Stumpt, Grace Lanning, Isabelle Scott (the widow of Dr Henry Scott) and Mrs Udy Bernnett.7 The weather was not the best, with a cold driving mist and only occasional glimpses of a cold and watery sun. While missionaries from the coast of Kenya were housed in mission buildings, those accustomed to the highlands occupied tents pitched around the mission’s football field. Breakfast was preceded by prayers in the tent of Charles Hurlburt of the Africa Inland Mission and after breakfast Hurlburt led a devotion on I Corinthians 1:10. Since the women did not take part in the business meetings, it was only in these meetings for worship that they could be actively involved. On the first day of the conference the rules for the business meeting were established. It was agreed that only the delegates would have voting rights and since no women were registered as delegates they would have no active role to play in the business meetings. Discussions ranged over a number of economic, political, theological and, particularly, cultural issues. There was particular concern over family issues, especially widows and inheritance, which occupied a great deal of time on Wednesday and part of Thursday. African customs of inheritance, intended to ensure that widows were not left unprotected and uncared for, provided that widows would be inherited by a male relative of the deceased man who was already married. Not only were many concerned that Christian widows and their children might become the ‘property of heathen relatives’, but also that such a provision posed a challenge to the missionary denunciations of polygamy. Another issue of concern was the mandatory labour required of male Africans by the colonial government. Delegates noted that this disrupted both family life and the village economy and concluded that forced labour was unacceptable. They also recognised the fact that boys under the age of puberty were being denied their childhood by being drafted to go and work away from home. That such issues were being discussed by male missionaries, however, was somewhat ironic given that it was mostly female missionaries who were engaged in teaching native women about family life, at least insofar as the Christian family and home was concerned. The absence of their voices placed limits on how well the conference could appreciate the context in which its missionaries were operating. Delegates also discussed paying custom duties on medical supplies for mission hospitals and agreed to approach the government for an exemption. 7  Gavin White, ‘Kikuyu: An Ecumenical Controversy’, unpublished PhD dissertation, School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London, 1970, p. 115.

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When they turned to matters theological, the delegates revisited the Nairobi resolutions of 1911 and opened up further discussion on the principles for church federation. The proposed constitution was discussed, with its embrace of the loyal acceptance of the Scriptures as a supreme rule of faith and practice and the Apostles’ and Nicene Creeds as a general expression of fundamental Christian belief. Additional emphases were placed on the nature of the triune God, the administration of two sacraments, Baptism and Holy Communion, and, finally, a common form of church membership. Discussions on baptism and confirmation revealed that, despite real differences, the various groups were ready to work towards unity. Delegates also agreed that, as a matter of church policy, no polygamist should be baptized or admitted to Holy Communion. Although the constitution was not signed by all the delegates, those who did sign committed themselves to sharing the information with their home churches. In all these deliberations, however, the voices of the women were muted. They were unable to contribute to the sessions, though some wives may have discussed these matters in private. It was still the case that women’s activities were not viewed as central to mission work. 4

Women at the Holy Communion Service

The conference concluded with a service of Holy Communion led by Bishop William Peel and the Rev. J. E. Hamshere of the Church of Scotland, using the Church of England Book of Common Prayer. The sermon was given by the Rev. Norman Maclean of the Church of Scotland and he preached from John 13:34. After the sermon the people were invited to the communion. Gavin White writes: When the time came to receive communion, Maclean records that there was a pause in which no one moved forward, until Mrs Henry Scott did so and the others followed. Only the Quakers did not, according to their principles, receive the sacrament. Mrs Scott described the service in moving terms, ‘we were all able to unite in the remembrance of our common Lord, and receive at the hands of saintly Bishop Peel the tokens of our fellowship. It was a historic occasion, and all felt the privilege of it, and were conscious of the rest and peace after the stress of the week. Federation was through and was already a reality: and so we went out into the starry African night, our hearts filled with a great thankfulness, and with the

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refrain of Mr Maclean’s stirring address in our cares: “‘A new commandment I give unto you, that ye love one another, even as I have loved you”.’8 At the Holy Communion, therefore, it was a woman who was the first to receive. Who was Mrs Isabelle Scott? She was a widow of Dr Henry Edwin Scott and had come to Kenya with her husband in 1907. After his death in 1911, she stayed on and chose to attend the missionary conference in 1913. In accounts of the Church of Scotland mission she is mentioned only in passing, as compared with her husband. Describing him, Macpherson notes: Dr. Scott was a remarkable man by any standard – versatile yet methodical, self-disciplined, balanced, tireless, and with the statesman’s eye for essentials and the capacity to translate his conception of what should be into practicable ways and means. The motto carved for him by his wife Belle on the bookshelves of his study – ‘first consider, then dare’ – seems to those who knew him to have been an accurate summation of his character.9 In his three years’ of service at Kikuyu, Henry Scott made a contribution of immeasurable value to the life and witness of the emerging Christian Church in East Africa, but his most far-reaching contribution to Christian life and witness was in the field of inter-church relations.10 He died of malaria on Tuesday 11 April 1911 after a trip to Tumu Tumu, only two months after initiating the ecumenical conference.11 Little was heard of his widow Isabelle between his death and the commencement of the Kikuyu Conference. Why was Norman MacLean so keen to note that there was silence before people stood up to partake of the Communion and that it was Mrs Scott who was first to receive? Maclean, who was signed in to the conference as a visitor, was the son of a schoolteacher on the Isle of Skye and a committed Presbyterian. As a young man he had felt oppressed by the puritanism of the Free Presbyterian Church which dominated the island as his family belonged to the established Church of Scotland. He was horrified by the ‘collective insanity’ of Presbyterians ‘fighting each other rather than fighting their common 8   Gavin White, ‘Kikuyu’, p. 132. 9   R. Macpherson, The Presbyterian Church in Kenya: An account of the origins and growth of the Presbyterian Church of East Africa (Nairobi: Presbyterian Church of East Africa, 1970), p. 43. 10  Macpherson, The Presbyterian Church, p. 49. 11  Isaiah Wahome Muita, Hewn from the quarry: Presbyterian Church of East Africa, 100 years and beyond (Nairobi, Kenya: Presbyterian Church of East Africa, 2003), p. 10.

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enemy’. As a student in London he had displayed an enthusiasm for church union at any cost. He was not only a popular preacher and minister of the fashionable Park Church in Glasgow, but also a special correspondent for a Glasgow newspaper and a member of the foreign mission committee of the Church of Scotland. Arriving late at the conference, he made a positive impression on his hearers, particularly on Mrs Scott. Maclean’s interest in Isabelle Scott perhaps reflected her status as the widow of a prominent figure in the ecumenical movement, but it is intriguing to note that, as the preacher, he did not receive communion first. He may also have been struck by the significance of Scott’s widow taking the initiative at a shared Eucharist that was – by the very broadness of its audience – a potentially revolutionary step. Isabelle Scott’s emphasis on the privilege associated with receiving this particular Holy Communion implies that she was aware of the deliberations of the conference and saw the service as a final culmination. That she, a Presbyterian, could describe the Anglican William Peel as a ‘saintly bishop’ was equally noteworthy. 5

The Visible Invisibility of Women in the 1913 Conference

The invisibility of women at the Kikuyu Conference reflects the ways in which history has been written in the Christian tradition. From the moment when Paul claimed Peter as the first witness of the Resurrection, making Mary Magdalene invisible and forgotten (I Corinthians 15:3–8), the role of women as pillars of mission has been neglected in the authoritative tradition of the Church. Even when St Augustine called Mary Magdalene ‘an apostle of apostles’ based on the commissioning given by Jesus in John 20:17–18, commissioning in the Church remained linked to apostleship and thus women were excluded.12 In the story of overseas missions women were equally excluded due to the patriarchal attitudes and the cult of domesticity. Woman was defined as complementary to man, physically inferior but morally superior.13 In the context of mission, the theology which governed the Church in its conduct of missions was inherently masculine. ‘Mission’ implied a male actor, male action, and male spheres of service. It was a task that was performed by men, and

12  See Gavin White, ‘Kikuyu’, p. 111. 13  Mary De Jong, ‘Protestantism and its Discontents in the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries’, Women Studies 19 (1991), pp. 259–69, here p. 260.

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women were merely supplementary.14 Little of the historiography of mission – or church history generally – addresses the role of women in mission. A similar deficiency is evident in the historiography of the Ecumenical Movement in the mission field. At Kikuyu the women who were present might not have contributed to the formal deliberations but may well have shared with each other their varied experiences of working with African women as well as discussing with their husbands the agenda of the main business meetings. The women may have been described as ‘honorary’ missionaries, but the work they did was mission work in context. Stevenson for example was working with the local women at the mission station by visiting native women and engaging with them on how to be Christian women. This kind of engagement made the women missionaries in their equal right. Mrs Scott, for instance, may have been the writer in her family, as she is later described as the biographer of Miss Stevenson. Mrs Scott met with an audience of about three hundred women twice a week for nine months, and this earned her the name or title, ‘the friend of the girls’. Similarly the firewood women called her ‘the Bibi who teaches women’.15 Isabelle Scott was conscious of the historic character of the Kikuyu Conference, not least the extent to which the CSM and CMS leaders were key to the federation. She was also aware that her husband and Bishop John Willis of the CMS held each other in high regard despite their differences in age. Willis indeed attested to Scott’s character in glowing terms: ‘I know of no missionary in East Africa whom we could less afford to spare that Dr. Scott. The more one looks at him the more one feels that his death is a damaging blow to missionary work in this country. No other man can take his place or do the work he was doing. We shall all feel the loss, not of a friend only but of a leader.’16 The presence of Scott’s widow at Kikuyu was a reminder that she could not just disappear from the radar of the churches’ deliberations. There was no way she could be completely invisible, even in the context of a patriarchal church. The invisibility of women at the Kikuyu conference was based on the ideology of domesticity and the relation of gender to power, even though much of what concerned the delegates had more to do with women and the family unit than with men exclusively. The invisibility of women was not based on their 14  Fiona Bowie, Deborah Kirkwood and Shirley Ardener, Women and Missions Past and Present: Anthropological and Historical Perceptions (Oxford: Berg, 1993). 15  Nyambura Njoroge, Kiama Kia Ngo: An African Christian Feminist Ethic of Resistance and Transformation (Legon, Ghana: Legon Theological Studies Series, 2000). 16  Macpherson, The Presbyterian Church in Kenya, p. 50.

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inability to discuss the issues but on the perception that they were peripheral to the work of the missions. The comity agreements were concerned with understandings of power and authority that were exclusively male in nature. The women who attended the Kikuyu conference were not official delegates to the conference; they were invisible and relegated to the private and identified as wives, widows or honorary missionaries. They were visible only when they attended the Holy Communion service. They were subverting their exclusion by the men in an ecumenical initiative. Even if their voices were muted in the official meetings, their voices were not muted in the prayers where the members worshipped God. Their actions, especially the action of Mrs Scott, led the others to share in the Holy Communion act that was to be a divisive venture. But when the woman was first to take it, the divisive act ceased to be divisive. 6 Conclusion In this chapter I have discussed the visible invisibility of women in the Kikuyu 1913 conference in which the women were not delegates but wives and honorary missionaries and how their roles were equally important because they participated in the conference from the margins. I have also discussed the role of Mrs Isabelle Scott in the controversial Holy Communion service at the end of the Conference. The ease with which she participated in the service is an indication of the journey she had walked with her husband as he prepared the initial documents on the ecumenical initiatives. As a widow she did not remain invisible but became visible and served as a reminder that her late husband was present and, through her, also witnessing the historic moment. The invisible yet visible women of Kikuyu paved the way for the visibility of women in the leadership of the National Council of Churches, though it is too soon to discuss the impact and role of Canon Rosemary Mbogo. Rosemary served as a teacher before she was ordained as a priest in the Anglican church of Kenya in 1999 and served in the Lavington United Church. Later she was made a canon and was appointed director of missions at the Anglican Church of Kenya. In 2010 she was appointed Provincial Secretary of the ACK. In 2013 she was elected chair of the National Council of Churches as the first woman to hold the post. She was the first woman chair in a council of churches that has member churches that acknowledge the visibility of women in leadership and some who are still opposed to the leadership of women. The legacy of Kikuyu has gradually led to the greater visibility of women in ministry in the East African churches.

Chapter 11

The Kikuyu Conference as a Precursor to the Development of African Christian Theology Zablon Nthamburi African Christian Theology emerges from a hermeneutical understanding of human existence from an African perspective. It is an attempt to incorporate biblical theology into the African worldview. It begins from the understanding of God from the African traditional religious heritage while focusing its attention on how Africans respond to issues related to faith and the metaphysical world. Simply stated, African Christian theology is born out of the dialogue between African Christian scholars and the traditional African world view. The African theologian has to grapple not only with the pre-Christian traditional heritage, but also with the biblical interpretation of this heritage. In a way, the theological discourse in Africa seeks to understand biblical hermeneutics within the historical and cultural context of Africa. The point of departure here is to recognize that Africans already had a genuine and authentic understanding of God. The task of theology in this instance is thus to unravel such knowledge within the context of Christian revelation. African Christian theology, then is an attempt to understand God’s presence within the context of African reality. African Christian theology has been evolving over a long period of time. Theology evolves out of people’s aspirations, situations in life, cultural inclinations and, above all, biblical interpretation of how God acts in a particular context. The African belief that the providential hand of God guards and directs all events in life provides a strong basis for African Christian theology to be truly theistic. The African concept of God as the power that directs all events and situations forms the African context. This is because there is nothing that happens beyond the realm of divine providence. Briefly stated, African Christian theology is a form of contextual theology that attempts to make the gospel relevant within a contemporary situation. It can also be understood as a liberation theology in so far as it endeavours to respond to issues of injustice, human rights, gender inequality, racism, tribalism and all forms of oppression. It also speaks to spiritual liberation in so far as the gospel is trapped and enslaved in western images and swaddling garments. I need to state from the outset that African Christian theology takes Scripture as its foundation and endeavours to interpret Scripture within the

© koninklijke brill nv, leiden, 2019 | doi:10.1163/9789004388680_013

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African world-view.1 This is because early missionary theology in Africa was largely biblically based. In Africa, there is a strong belief in the reality of the spirit world, which means that belief in miracles and deliverance has become a strong pointer to the reality of God in the world. It needs to be said, however, that missionary theology was foreign to an African understanding of scriptural hermeneutics.2 The incarnational nature of African theology tries to contextualize Christianity in Africa in order that it might be considered truly African. It is within this context that I will discuss the view that the 1913 Kikuyu conference contributed to the emergence of the African Christian theologian. The Kikuyu conference was convened against the background of the run up to the First World War. It was given special impetus by the World Missionary Conference in Edinburgh 1910. By 1908 Protestant missions in East Africa felt that that there was a need to move beyond the community arrangements they had initiated. In 1909 at the Maseno Conference a resolution was passed which, among other things, proposed the establishment of a united church that would be self-supporting, self-governing and self-propagating.3 The Kikuyu Conference of 1913 was, therefore, a culmination of the efforts of many years towards creating a single church representing the Church of Scotland Mission (CSM), the American non-denominational Africa Inland Mission (AIM), the Church Missionary Society (CMS), The United Methodist Mission (UMM) and the Gospel Mission Society (GMS). While some missions promoted the idea of a fully united church, others advanced the idea of a federation. At the end of the conference only four missionary societies signed a declaration for the formation of a Federation of Missions.4 While the intention was noble, it was soon marred by what has been called the ‘Westonian controversy’, named after Anglican Bishop Frank Weston of Zanzibar who objected to such a federation on account of theological concerns. It is important to point out from the outset that the Kikuyu Conference was a conference of missions and only expatriate missionaries were present. There were no African representatives at this conference of like-minded Protestants 1  Aylward Shorter, African Christian Theology: Adaption or Incarnation (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis, 1977), p. 20. 2  Mercy Oduyoye, ‘Feminist Theology in an African Perspective’ in Rosino Gibellini (ed.), Paths of African Theology (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis, 1992), pp. 166–81. 3  J. N. K. Mugambi, ‘The Ecumenical Movement and Future of the church in Africa’, in Jesse Ndwiga Kanyua Mugambi and Laurenti Magesa (eds), The Church in African Christianity: Innovative Essays in Ecclesiology (Nairobi: Initiatives, 1990), pp. 5–28, here p. 12. 4  W. B. Anderson, The Church in East Africa 1840–1974 (Dodoma: Central Tanganyika Press, 1977), p. 71.

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and furthermore it did not include the Roman Catholics at all. As such, representation was far from inclusive: it was an initiative of the expatriate missionaries purporting to speak on behalf of the indigenous people. It was, however, hoped that it would lead to the creation of a United East African church.5 One of the consequences of excluding African Christians from the Kikuyu Conference was the emergence of African Indigenous (instituted or initiated) churches. Some African leaders who grew up in the mission churches felt strongly that the theological orientation that was propagated by their mother churches did not adequately address their spiritual and existential needs. The schism was brought about by missionary domination of church leadership, as well as an inability to understand the African ethos and philosophy. Many Africans were yearning for a full expression of African Christianity through their traditions which embraced something of their folklore, as well as their cultural idioms and idiosyncrasies.6 They wanted to reaffirm their cultural values that had been repressed by missionaries. Their theological expressions needed to be informed by indigenous symbols, just as their music needed to be authentic. It is true to say that there was always an element of protest which we still detect in African theology today. The First World War did nothing to help to heal the divergence. Africans felt that western theology was so decadent that it could not heal rifts within nations. They needed a higher moral authority that would overcome brokenness in communities and forge unity among nations. 1

Translation of the Bible into African Language

As one of the basic sources of theological reflection, the Bible forms the basis of the authority of African Christian theology. It is taken as a primary witness of God’s revelation in Jesus Christ. God’s message is received and lived as it is portrayed in the Bible. Rightly interpreted, the Bible becomes the norm on which God’s will can be perceived and the yardstick upon which the flock can be taught the truth about God and his will to the world and the community. The translation of the Bible was taken as a tool for evangelization. The work of Bible translation was undertaken as a joint venture by churches working 5  John McManners (ed.), The Oxford Illustrated History of Christianity (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992), p. 476. 6  Zablon John Nthamburi, The Pilgrimage of the African Church: Towards the twenty-first Century (Nairobi: Uzima Press, 1995), p. 120.

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in a particular language group. There was a protracted debate as to whether indigenous terms and expressions should be used to translate the Bible.7 The centrality of the Bible is held in great esteem. Doctrinal theological positions have to be defined through biblical interpretation. It is important to note that to a large extent the Bible is interpreted in the process of translation. For it is not a literal translation that is undertaken but rather contextual translation that is able to speak to people in their own tongue. By having the Scriptures in their own language, people have a feeling that God speaks to them in their own language and therefore he understands their fears, hopes and concerns. It is therefore the duty of theology to interpret God’s existence in a manner that is understood by ordinary people as they encounter the acts of God in history that are able to transform their understanding of Christianity. Thus their faith was founded on a personal encounter with God through Jesus Christ. From the very earliest times, this formed the basis for theological expression by African Christians. Some early Christians became freelance evangelists who were able to interpret the Scriptures through the local culture, idioms and popular stories. 2

The Holiness Movement: Revival in East Africa

It is also important to point out that the dichotomy between the profane and the sacred does not exist in the African reality. In the same way, African Christian theology does not contemplate aspects of life that are sacred and profane. For all existence is ordered by one reality: God. God as the author of life and existence wishes good to all creation, which means that there can be no other power that can contradict his will. As people continued to accept the Christian faith, there arose an enthusiasm that was akin to the ‘Holiness movement’ which developed in North America in the nineteenth century. Yet it was spontaneous in a way that could only be interpreted to mean that the Holy Spirit was moving people to higher levels of spirituality. This excitement about the gospel was also influenced by the people’s cultural orientation and an understanding that the presence of God was so certain that people responded in their own peculiar and significant ways. They were ready to share the message of salvation with their communities, exhorting them to be part of the larger

7  John K. Karanja, Founding an African Faith: Kikuyu Anglican Christianity, 1900–1945 (Nairobi: Uzima Press, 1999), pp. 129–35.

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family of God. Tribal and ethnic barriers that had existed seemed to melt away in the light of the new values that were brought by the gospel. The revival was not only contained within the mission churches but also among the African instituted churches as well. But within the mission churches, the East Africa Revival became an inter-denominational movement embraced by African adherents. The movement which began in 1927 in Rwanda spread across the East African territories.8 At first the missionaries were disturbed by the manifestation of enthusiasm and emotions and discouraged their members from embracing the movement. Yet they quickly discovered that the revival had a positive, albeit cultural, response to the yearnings of the spirit. Revived churches reinterpreted their faith in an authentic theological understanding of a life lived within the confines of the liberating influence of the gospel. They demonstrated that they had indeed been transformed and were concerned about their communities and their neighbours. They became concerned about their socio-economic and spiritual transformation in tandem with the African spirit of ‘Umuntu’ and extended family.9 The Revival as a holiness movement was largely a lay movement. There have been different expressions of revival groups over time. Some groups tended to be more spiritual and Pentecostal in expression, while others tended to be nationalistic and political. But they all seemed to favour an authentic social expression of their faith in ways that were compatible with traditional spirituality. The revival (holiness) movement inspired the spread of Christianity in East Africa. Through the revival, there was a foundation for an indigenous structure of the church. The spirit of the Kikuyu Conference was actualized through the unity of purpose and by sharing each other’s burdens. The movement has remained a lay movement within the churches and has not been tempted to break away as a separate organization. The seeds of unity initiated by the Kikuyu Conference found practical expression in this movement which has made the church grow to maturity.

8  Peter Falk, The Growth of the Church in Africa (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan Publishing House, 1979), pp. 267–70. See also Kevin Ward, The East African Revival: History and Legacies (Farnham, Surrey: Ashgate, 2012); Richard K. McMaster, A Gentle Wind of God: The Influence of the East African Revival (Scottdale, PA: Herald Press, 2006). 9  Zablon Nthamburi, ‘The Beginning and Development of Christianity in Kenya’, in Zablon Nthamburi (ed.), From Mission to Church: A Handbook of Christianity in East Africa (Nairobi: Uzima Press, 1995), pp. 1–36, here p. 122.

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The Theology of Ecumenism at Kikuyu

The Kikuyu Conference formed a watershed for the development of nascent ecumenism in East Africa. What was sought in the first instance was a spirit of cooperation between missionary societies. Even though initially no local indigenous people were involved, it was nonetheless an attempt to bring about ecclesial unity in the context of a divided and fractured body of Christ. While the Anglican leaders were forthright in their endeavour to seek unity, they discovered that historical doctrinal divisions dogged their efforts to overcome age old divisions. While they were conscious of the fact that they needed to protect the young church from unnecessary differences, they were still held back by church traditions and doctrinal pronouncements. Africans later felt that a divided church will always remain a scandal to the propagation of the gospel of unity. The witness of the church requires organic unity that can be witnessed by the unbelieving community. It was also felt that there cannot be any meaningful unity where people cannot commune together, break bread together, and participate fully in the ministry of service. African theology views ecumenism as exemplifying working together in God’s mission. It is understood as the work of the Holy Spirit who inspires Christians from various confessions to desire fellowship together in order that the work of God, particularly in proclamation, can prosper. Again, this is seen as the workings of the Holy Spirit and cannot be hampered by human impediments. Such unity is God-inspired and part of the greater witness to the unbelieving world. As we have seen, such workings of the Holy Spirit can be manifested in renewal and charismatic utterances. For churches which have experienced revival have exhibited vibrancy in mission work and outreach to such an extent that they have become the backbone of the evangelistic campaigns. While at times such movements have tended to be separatist, their enthusiasm has proved useful if channelled in a legitimate manner. With regard to pneumatological theology, African theology puts emphasis on God’s presence in the world as he continues to create new structures and relationships. The spirit helps to mould a worshipping community from different strands in order to equip the church for the task of mission and service. This to a large extent exemplifies the spirit of the Kikuyu Conference. Ecumenism at this early stage challenged the different missions to work together for unity of purpose as they were challenged by issues of peace, reconciliation, development and social coherence. Such political and societal challenges provided a strong motivation to work for unity within a fragile climate. This kind of unity called for understanding and truthful dialogue with African Traditional

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Religion as a way of understanding the society. It envisaged a Christian calling that would, among other things, manifest the spirit of Christ through service, nation building and societal transformation. African Christian theology has undertaken this endeavour and initiated theological discourse on the transformation of the Christian mission through service and witness. Jesus Christ’s message of salvation has been contextualized so that it can speak to the African soul. African enthusiasm and dedication to evangelism has made the gospel penetrate the African religiosity that has become the preparatory ground for positive cross-cultural evangelism. The so called ‘independent movement’ that has led to various disputes through the history of African Christianity was either anti-missionary or antiauthority in its orientation. It originated not from the basis of faith or theological understanding but from the ecclesiastical system and policies that seemed unaccommodating to Africans. It was also an issue of human relationships. Self-governing churches of African descent were, therefore, expressing their discontent with missionary polity in an effort to maintain an indigenous African identity. 4 Conclusion The Kikuyu experience was not only concerned about the unity of the missionary enterprise but more distinctly with the building up of the African Christian community and sought to make that possible by calling on the missionary churches to adapt themselves. The Kikuyu Conference of 1918, for instance, passed this statement: ‘in setting our hand to this constitution, we, the representatives of Allied societies, being profoundly convinced, for the name of our common Lord, and of those African Christians to whom our controversies are as yet unknown, of the need for a united church in British East Africa, earnestly entreat the Home Authorities to take such steps as may be necessary, in consultation with the churches concerned to remove the difficulties which at present make this ideal impossible.’10 It was a recognition quite early in the history of East African missionary Christianity that in order to build a strong church. Christianity had to take cognizance of the African roots of religion and culture. While there had to be a strong African initiative in evangelizing, African evangelists and agents were best placed to build up the nascent 10   Report of United Conference of Missionary Societies in British East Africa, 22–26 July 1918 (Nairobi: Swift Press, 1918), p. 9.

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Christian community. It was understood that the Holy Spirit was leading the missionary movement to recognize the place of authentic theology that would be mustered from the grassroots (‘theology from below’). For God reveals himself to people within their own socio-cultural heritage, using their everyday life experiences. This meant that the Kikuyu initiative, albeit implicitly, gave impetus to the formulation of an African Christian theology which would manifest itself in the holiness movement, prophetism, spiritism, liturgy, architecture and communal living. The beginnings of the African instituted churches, most of which broke away from mission churches, attested to the emergence of a paradigm shift in the theological orientation in Africa. From Kikuyu local churches learned a lesson about unity which actualizes itself in various forms in the local church. Another lesson was that the church was a fellowship which should encompass all God’s people and which should be demonstrated through community outreach and welfare. Kikuyu gave an impetus for African Christians to begin to read the Bible within their own cultural context. The Bible acquired a new meaning as Africans found that it spoke to their own situation in metaphors that they could understand. Through their own church structures (indigenous) and through charismatic revival movements African Christians were able to undertake their own theological reflection without having to borrow their models from others. They were able to undertake authentic theological reflection in their own political, social, economic and religious context. Through contextualizing the message of the Bible, Christians in Africa have discovered how God is involved in their day to day realities. They have experienced the message of salvation within their cultural religious milieu. The Kikuyu Conference was concerned about the churches being a vessel through which adherents of member missions would live into a calling that reflects God’s presence in the world as revealed through the incarnate Christ. They desired a Christian koinonia that would entreat worshippers to speak directly to God. They yearned for a church that would be able to embody the spirit of Christ through authentic worship and evangelism. African theology places a great deal of emphasis on a life of service (diakonia). It favours a model of the church built on the clan system while also emphasizing ecumenism. This is an attempt to recognize that the family of God in the church becomes one people; where Christ appears as the proto-ancestor.11

11  John Mary Waliggo, ‘The African Clan as the True Model of the African Church’ in Mugambi and Magesa (eds), The Church in African Christianity, pp. 111–27, esp. pp. 121–5.

Chapter 12

The Kenyan Alliance of Protestant Missions 1919–1963: Ecumenism Adrift in a Colonial Society Kevin Ward 1 Overview The 1913 Kikuyu Controversy had given the Protestant missions in East Africa an unexpected, and largely unwelcome, international notoriety.1 When the missionaries met again at the end of the war, their desire to create a united African church remained strong. But they were now careful to move more cautiously. They suggested the creation of an ‘Alliance’ of Protestant missions rather than a ‘Federation’. In so far as this looser union did not envisage immediate changes to the ecclesiastical structures of any church (in particular, the episcopal ordering of the Anglican church) the missionaries hoped to avoid incurring Anglo-Catholic objections. This chapter will explore the optimism with which the Alliance was inaugurated and why it failed comprehensively to achieve what it set out to do: the gradual creation of a unified African Church. The Alliance was built on the assumption that there already existed a comprehensive theological unity, based on the Evangelical character of all the Alliance participants. It also assumed that African Christians would gladly abandon competitive denominationalism in favour of a united Christian front. In the event both these assumptions ran into difficulties. In 1922 the theological unity was called into question by the split within the Anglican Church Missionary Society (in Britain) over the authority and complete trustworthiness of the Scriptures. While the CMS in Kenya did not split, these controversies caused deep anguish, particularly within the Africa Inland Mission, a largely American non-denominational conservative evangelical body with extensive work throughout Kenya. AIM effectively withdrew from active participation in the 1  This chapter relies extensively on archive material. The following are the chief sources: Kenya National Archives (Nairobi) K NA. Anglican Church of Kenya Archives (housed in the KNA)  A CK. National Council of Churches of Kenya Archives (Nairobi) N CCK. International Missionary Council Archives (Geneva) I MC.  A IM Archives: Kenya (Wheaton, Illinois) A IM. Arthur Papers (University of Edinburgh) A P.

© koninklijke brill nv, leiden, 2019 | doi:10.1163/9789004388680_014

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Alliance, and indicated their unwillingness to participate in any moves towards a united church until such theological controversies had been satisfactorily resolved. The other blow to the Alliance came in 1929 with the heated African Christian responses to the controversy over female circumcision (now generally known as female genital mutilation). The chief opponent of this traditional Kikuyu practice was Dr John Arthur of the Church of Scotland Mission. In attempting to impose an oath on members of the Presbyterian Church which eschewed female circumcision, Dr Arthur unintentionally provoked an outcry among the Kikuyu people, and deeply divided the Christian community. Some Christians left the mission churches to found independent churches. Dr Arthur was felt particularly aggrieved that the Anglican CMS did not fully support his stand. In contrast, the more flexible and gradualist approach of CMS to the abolition of female circumcision was attractive to the Christian dissidents. A series of negotiations was opened in the 1930s, with a view either to the rebels joining the Anglican church or to receiving help from the Anglicans to foster their own churches. Meanwhile Anglicans who had moved into the spheres of other Alliance missions, which had a stricter policy on female initiation and on other ethical issues, were adamant that they wished to remain Anglican. These controversies severely limited the ecumenical progress of the Alliance. Its one substantial achievement was the creation of the Alliance High School, which was to play an important role in the educational development of Kenya. It was only with the spread of the East African Revival in the 1940s that co-operation between Christians of different denominations was re-established on a new basis, one propelled by African Christians rather than missionaries, and with little interest in ecclesiastical ecumenical schemes. 2

The Establishment of the Alliance

The outbreak of the First World War constituted something of an ecclesiological watershed for much of global Christianity, and East Africa proved no exception. In Kenya, early twentieth-century missionary attempts to create a united African Church in Kenya had foundered in 1913, but the recruitment of mission-educated young men to fight as a separate unit in the British ‘Carrier Corps’ gave it a new lease of life, and in 1918 missionary leaders gathered again at the Church of Scotland mission station of Kikuyu.2 Conscious 2  Ironically, its Kikuyu name is Thogoto, meaning Scotland. To avoid confusion between the Kikuyu people and the Scottish Mission station, I will, in the rest of this chapter, normally refer to what the Scots called their ‘Kikuyu’ mission as ‘Thogoto’.

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of earlier disputes, the missionaries avoided using the term ‘federation’, and instead agreed to establish an ‘Alliance of Missionary Societies’. The scheme, though anticipating the creation of a united Protestant Church in Kenya in the not-too-distant future, eschewed short-term organisational unity, and the missionaries abstained from holding a joint communion service during the conference. The basis of the Alliance was declared to be ‘the loyal acceptance of Holy Scripture as our supreme rule of Faith and Practice; and of the Apostles’ and Nicene Creeds as a general expression of fundamental belief; and in the absolute authority of Holy Scripture as the Word of God; in the Deity of Jesus Christ; and in the atoning death of the Lord Jesus Christ as the Ground of forgiveness.’3 Bishop Weston of Zanzibar, who five years earlier had spearheaded protests against the 1913 agreement, remained disturbed by the lack of any reference to episcopacy, but did not actively try to sabotage the creation of the Alliance, which, in his view, did not so immediately threaten the catholicity of Ecclesia Anglicana. The Alliance was built on two major premises: namely that its missionaries were united on fundamental issues of faith and practice, and that it was still possible to avoid denominational divisions among the nascent Christian community in Kenya. The next two decades were to see the wholesale erosion of these premises. In 1922 the idea that missionaries were fully united on matters of faith was already in question given the controversies among Anglican Evangelicals over whether more liberal understandings of the authority of the Bible could be countenanced. This dispute was to lead to a schism from the Church Missionary Society (CMS) in Britain. No CMS missionary working in Kenya left the CMS at this time, but CMS was one of the main missions working in Kenya, and, for some of the other Protestant missionaries, the dispute called into question the possibility of working together. The new missionary society which emerged from this crisis, the Bible Churchmen’s Missionary Society (BCMS), did come to work in the North West of Kenya in 1929. BCMS relations with CMS were reasonably cordial, however, not least because they served in a part of Kenya where there were no CMS missions.4 In 1929 the second premise for the creation of the Alliance received a fatal blow with the outbreak of what, at the time, was called the Female Circumcision Crisis in Kikuyuland. The Crisis undermined all attempts to 3  For the text of the Alliance agreement and a general account of its proceedings see Gavin White, ‘Kikuyu 1913: An Ecumenical Controversy’, PhD dissertation, University of London, 1970. See also Martin Capon, Towards Unity in Kenya (Nairobi: East African Publishing House, 1962 [written in 1946]). 4  W. S. Hooton and J. Stafford Wright, The First 25 Years of the BCMS (London: BCMS, 1947).

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achieve an agreed practice of church discipline and provoked, among many, a suspicion of missionary intentions. Having never been included in the conversations which had given rise to the Alliance, Kikuyu Christians now demanded that their views be taken into account. The assumption that the mission field was a tabula rasa was exposed as a chimera. As a result of these two convulsions within the Christian community in Kenya, the Alliance was never able to achieve, even to a limited extent, the aspirations of its founders. This did not mean that Christian co-operation was abandoned – but it was not along the lines envisaged by the Alliance. Perhaps the one enduring positive achievement of the Alliance was the creation of the Alliance High School at Thogoto, which throughout colonial times offered a high standard of schooling on a Christian basis. Alliance High School created the Protestant elite which assumed leadership in Kenya after independence.5 The signatories to the Alliance in 1918 were the (Anglican) Church Missionary Society, the (Presbyterian) Church of Scotland Mission, the United Methodist Mission, and the Africa Inland Mission (an international, mainly American, faith mission which recruited missionaries from a wide variety of Evangelical churches). These missions were active in central Kenya, among the Kikuyu, Embu, Meru, Kamba and Maasai peoples. The Kikuyu were the largest ethnic group, and had the largest number of Christian converts in central Kenya. The missionary ‘scramble’, which had begun in the 1890s, had produced the largest concentration of missions in this area, with rival mission stations located close to each other, with many opportunities for boundary disputes and the possibility of converts moving around from one mission to another in ways which the missionaries regarded as potentially destructive of sound catechesis and discipline. The other major area of missionary activity was in western Kenya in the area known in colonial times as Kavirondo, home of the Luo and Luhya peoples. This area had originally been part of the British Protectorate of Uganda, but had been transferred to Kenya colony in 1906. At the time of the Kikuyu Conferences, the Anglican work in Kavirondo was still within the Diocese of Uganda. The Bishop of Uganda, J. J. Willis, was an active proponent of the Alliance – Maseno mission in western Kenya had been first established by him – but the issues of Christian co-operation in Kavirondo were always different from those in central Kenya. Of the four missionary societies who formed the Alliance, only the CMS had an extensive presence in western Kenya, although it competed with a great variety of new American missionary societies. 5  B. E. Kipkorir, ‘The Alliance High School and the Making of the Kenya African elite’, PhD dissertation, University of Cambridge, 1969.

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While the latter were not particularly interested in unity schemes they did not threaten the dominance of the CMS. Moreover, Anglicans in western Kenya were, until 1922, part of the vigorous Native Anglican Church of Uganda, operating under a constitution devised by Bishop Alfred Tucker, which gave African Christians a strong sense of membership of an indigenous church.6 The desire of the Alliance’s founders to avoid the creation of distinctive denominations did not apply to Kavirondo, where membership of just such a denomination was already well established. Indeed, there were more baptised Anglicans in Kavirondo in 1922 (9640) than in the rest of Kenya (6175).7 In 1922, Kavirondo Anglicans were transferred from the Church of Uganda, and included within the Diocese of Mombasa, with its less developed diocesan life, lower levels of African participation, and its racially segregated constitution. The move was not welcome to African Christians in western Kenya, who never developed any attachment to the Alliance, whose concerns were largely centred on affairs in central Kenya. The first crisis within the Alliance occurred in 1922 when one of the leading Alliance signatories, the Africa Inland Mission, expressed concern about what its leaders saw as the threat which ‘modernist’ understandings of the Bible posed to missionary work. AIM had its headquarters at Kijabe, not far from the CSM central station at Thogoto and CMS stations at Kijabe and Limuru, and its field director in East Africa, Charles Hurlburt, had been a leading figure in the ecumenical discussions in 1913 and 1922.8 In 1922, a long-running conflict within the Church Missionary Society was coming to a head. A considerable number of CMS supporters, led by a Liverpool clergyman, Daniel Bartlett, were alarmed at the increasing acceptance of ‘liberal’ thinking within the Society, expressed in its openness to utilising the findings of biblical criticism, and a growth of tolerance of non-evangelical traditions within the Church of England. Bartlett deprecated such ‘comprehensiveness’ which, he felt, prejudiced the evangelical basis of the Society. Bartlett tabled a motion to the CMS council in London, reasserting CMS’s belief in the historical trustworthiness of the Bible. That November the Bartlett group seceded from the Society, having failed to gain sufficient assurances on the full

6  H. B. Hansen, Mission, Church and State in a Colonial Setting: Uganda 1890–1925 (London: Heinemann, 1984). 7  A CK Archives. File: Maseno: Statistics 1922. 8  For further discussion about AIM’s views, see K. Ward, ‘The Development of Protestant Christianity in Kenya, 1910–1940’, PhD dissertation, University of Cambridge, 1976, pp. 6–28.

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inspiration and historicity of Holy Scriptures, in particular an assurance about ‘the truth of all Christ’s utterances’.9 The events in London alarmed the AIM missionaries in Kenya. In the USA, divisions between liberals and conservatives within the evangelical churches had become even more polarised. The publication, of ‘The Fundamentals’, a collection of scholarly articles on biblical authority, had become a benchmark for evangelical resistance to the erosion of traditional Protestant orthodoxy. Charles Hurlburt had always been a keen proponent of missionary co-operation and he had few fears about the CMS missionaries in Kenya, with whom he had worked for twenty years. He was concerned, however, that in future CMS might send new missionaries who did not share his evangelical perspective. As the Representative Council of the Alliance (set up in the aftermath of the agreement in 1918) began to make plans for joint ordinations and a joint theological college, Hurlburt wanted strong assurances for the future. Some of his younger colleagues, like John Stauffacher, were alarmed at the very idea of a united native church. They feared that it would bring an ecclesiastical tyranny which would compromise their freedom and independence as missionaries, and they reacted negatively to the Lambeth Appeal of 1920, whose irenic tones raised fears of an ungodly worldwide church based on compromise.10 Hurlburt, who by this time was pioneering missionary work in the Belgian Congo, was facing a certain amount of discontent at his own leadership. He valued the Alliance, but could not afford to appear to compromise. In anticipation of an important meeting of the Representative Council of the Alliance, he persuaded the AIM Kenya field council to issue a Memorandum outlining AIM’s conditions for any future participation in schemes for a united church or joint ordinations: I. Believing that loyalty to the Absolute and Eternal Deity of our Lord Jesus Christ is more important than unity, and that for the AIM unity with other Missions is not possible on any other basis, and believing that the trend of Modernism is towards denial of the real Deity of Christ and that much of the so-called ‘liberalism’ in Biblical Criticism or Interpretation is dangerous because it opens the dykes for all conclusions of modern 9   Cf. Hooton and Stafford Wright, The First 25 Years. For a CMS perspective see G. Hewitt, The Problems of Success, Volume I (London: SCM Press, 1971), pp. 461–79. 10  Florence Stauffacher, Diaries, various entries in January 1922. I am grateful to her son, who was serving as an AIM missionary in Narok, Kenya, for letting me see these private diaries in 1974. In opposing the idea of a ‘world church’ one might detect a parallel with President Wilson’s enthusiasm for a ‘League of Nations’, equally godless according to some fundamentalists. On the Lambeth Appeal, see the chapter by Charlotte Methuen in the present volume.

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doubt and unbelief. Therefore the AIM do not see how there can be a real and workable union in a United College in Kenya unless the other Societies in the Alliance agree to send out to Kenya as missionaries those only who hold the conservative Evangelical position. II. We also believe it to be imperative That the teaching faculty shall adhere to the three points of the following statement of faith: a. the Absolute and Eternal Deity of the Lord Jesus Christ b. His substitutional Atonement c. The absolute Authority and Integrity of Holy Scripture so held and interpreted today by the Conservative Evangelical Part of the Church of England.11 There was some dissent from those AIM missionaries who wished simply to withdraw from the Alliance altogether, but a majority of the field council backed Hurlburt. At the subsequent Alliance meeting Hurlburt explained the Memorandum against the background of the CMS controversy. He talked of ‘a greater conflict even than in the Reformation’.12 The Bishop of Uganda attended the meeting, his final direct participation in the Alliance, as he prepared to transfer Kavirondo to the Diocese of Mombasa. He expressed doubts about safeguarding the faith through paper formularies, as did Dr Philip representing the Church of Scotland Mission. There was no Methodist representative at this meeting, but the other two missions did agree that ‘for the sake of unity in the Mission field’ and ‘because of the dangers of confusing the minds of African primitive Christians with questions that they are incapable of entering’, they would request their home committees to send to Kenya only those who ‘wholeheartedly and unreservedly accept the fundamental principles of the Alliance with special reference to the three points emphasised in…. [the AIM] Memorandum’. The Bishop of Mombasa, Richard S. Heywood, commended the resolution, but also talked about the need for freedom in interpretation of the Scriptures, a statement, which however innocently intended, caused further mistrust among AIM missionaries, especially those who had not been present at the Alliance meeting. Freedom of interpretation was precisely what they wanted to disallow.13 11  International Missionary Council Archive, IMC Box 234, Minutes of the Representative Council of the Alliance, 31.8–2.9.1922. 12  Ibid. This was common language at the time within American fundamentalist circles, cf. N. F. Furniss, The Fundamentalist Controversy 1918–31 (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1954), p. 42. 13  I MC Box 234, Minutes of the Representative Council of the Alliance, 31.8–2.9.1922.

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In Britain, the Memorandum was given a cold reception. In correspondence with J. W. Ogilvie of the Church of Scotland, J. H. Oldham, the Secretary of the International Missionary Council, was dismissive: The unity of the church in East Africa is a high and worth[y] aim, but the right way to secure it is not to establish that church on the basis of an amateur and ill-considered theology which will cut it off from the historic churches of Christendom which allow a larger liberty and stand for a much richer and more adequate theology. The actions of the Representative Council, in so far as it comes known, will certainly prevent many of the best missionaries of the younger generation offering for service in East Africa.14 Ogilvie agreed entirely and wrote back to the Scottish missionaries rejecting, in no uncertain terms, the AIM request: In their memorandum the AIM ask practically that, apart altogether from a general expression of adherence to the basis of the constitution of the Alliance, a fresh confessional guarantee be signed by our Church of Scotland missionaries to Kikuyu, that the tenure of office of such missionaries be made to depend on the tenure of their orthodoxy and that as to their orthodoxy the AIM must be satisfied before ever they are accept as missionaries in the Kenya Field. Manifestly no union on such conditions could possibly be considered by the Church of Scotland. Defining the orthodoxy of Church of Scotland missionaries in terms of the theological views held by a particular party within the Church of England was a bizarre aspect of the AIM Memorandum. But Ogilvie did end on a conciliatory note: ‘We shall endeavour to send out missionaries who can work cooperatively with all loyalty of heart.’15 CMS itself was too preoccupied with its own internal crisis to offer an immediate response and it never formally did so. In any case, given CMS’s rejection of Bartlett’s demands, no response to the AIM Memorandum was likely to carry conviction with the AIM. Nevertheless, CMS was anxious to assure its own supporters that it was not hostile to conservative evangelical views. It wanted to be comprehensive of a wide shade of opinion, including conservative evangelical opinion. In Uganda, there was the sensitive issue of the establishment of 14  I MC Box 234, Oldham to Ogilvie, 2.11.1922. 15  I MC Box 234, Ogilvie ‘Memorandum on recent developments in Kenya Colony’, 1922.

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a CMS mission to the recently mandated Belgian territory of Ruanda-Urundi. The medical doctors Dr Leonard Sharp and Dr Algernon Stanley Smith had organised financial support to enable this to happen, and were poised to advance, but they strongly sympathised with the Bartlett group. Delicate negotiations were needed to ensure that the new Ruanda Mission remained a part of CMS.16 From 1926 a former missionary in Kenya, Handley Hooper, was CMS Africa Secretary in London. Personally, he took a broad view on biblical and evangelical doctrinal orthodoxy, but he was anxious to maintain strong friendly relations with more conservative missionaries. In Kenya, CMS continued to have a number of missionaries whom conservatives branded as liberal, not least the great social reformer Archdeacon W. E. Owen in Kavirondo, who had transferred from Uganda to Kenya in 1918. As far as AIM was concerned, CMS was insufficiently serious in rooting out modernism. Although AIM ceased to be an active participant in the Alliance after 1922 and refused to take part in any schemes working towards the creation of a united church, it did not formally resign from membership of the Alliance. The main reason for this was the creation of the Alliance High School. By 1924 plans were under way to create an elite mission school. If the missions were to maintain a leading role in African education, they needed to be seen by government to be capable of providing opportunities beyond the elementary schools where they had a virtual monopoly, but providing the financial resources for such a school was a challenge. Dr Arthur, the head of the Church of Scotland Mission, encouraged a retired Nairobi biscuit manufacturer, Ernest Carr, to offer support. Carr was a keen Christian, of decidedly conservative theological views, three of whose daughters had married East African missionaries, and was to become a major contributor to the finances of the Ruanda Mission. He was anxious that the ethos and teaching staff of the new school would be soundly conservative and hoped that AIM’s support for the school would help to ensure this. Indeed, he offered to pay AIM’s Alliance contribution in 1928 and 1929 in order to ensure that they did not leave. Lee Downing, who by the mid-1920s had replaced Hurlburt as the field director of the AIM in Kenya, was indeed keen to be involved in the school, as he explained in 1928: ‘The Alliance High School is a unique institution in this Colony in that government provides four-fifths of the salaries … yet permits the missionaries who are members of

16  K. Ward, ‘Revival, Mission and Church in Kigezi, Rwanda and Burundi’, in Kevin Ward and Emma Wild-Wood (eds), The East African Revival: History and Legacies (Farnham, Surrey: Ashgate, 2012), pp. 12–18.

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the Board to require that all the teaching shall be in accord with the Word of God as interpreted by the fundamentalists.’17 Downing may have exaggerated the formal commitment to ‘fundamentalism’ required of the staff, but Kipkorir’s study of the origins of Alliance High School, shows how important these issues were for the appointment of the first Principal of the school.18 George Grieve, of the Church of Scotland Mission, became the first headmaster serving from 1926 to 1940, when he was succeeded by Carey Francis, the Headmaster of the CMS Maseno High School in western Kenya. Francis retired in 1962, by which time Alliance High School had become one of the most prestigious schools in British colonial Africa. Many of the leaders of independent Kenya were educated there, and Francis was accorded what amounted to a state funeral when he died in 1966.19 In fact, neither Grieve nor Francis quite fitted into the AIM’s conception of a ‘conservative evangelical’. Their outstanding careers as missionary educationalists would tend to suggest that Oldham’s fears about the inhibiting effects of the AIM Memorandum on recruitment to East Africa were not realised. It is nevertheless true to say that, in colonial Kenya, the majority of CMS and CSM missionaries were conservative theologically. ‘Modernism’ remained a distant issue in the development of Kenyan Protestantism, not least because of a consensus among missionaries that the intellectual ferment which affected the Church of Europe and America would have a destructive impact on African Christian communities in Kenya. This produced what one Uganda missionary, John Poulton, described in 1961 as ‘fundamentalism by assumption … an unexpressed, but powerful, determining force in all “free” preaching’.20 One of the few missionaries who dissented from this dominant tradition was Archdeacon Owen. In the 1940s he drew up a ‘catechism’ which introduced some evolutionary ideas, reflecting Owen’s own archaeological and anthropological interests. One of the first African Anglican priests in western Kenya, Canon Esau Oywaya, remembers how Owen did not feel that he should be reticent in speaking to Africans about evolution and biblical criticism. Oywaya spoke highly of Owen as a charismatic person and a defender of African rights, but he was not impressed by his biblical teaching:

17  A IM Archives. L. H. Downing to Anna Shollenberger, 25.5.1928. 18  Kipkorir, ‘The Alliance High School’. 19  L. B. Greaves, Carey Francis of Kenya (London: Rex Collings, 1969). 20  J. Poulton, ‘Like Father, Like Son: Reflections on the Church of Uganda’, International Review of Missions 50 (1961), pp. 297–307, here p. 301.

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He joined a group which said we came from apes. He often preached about these things. He was sometimes against Paul. If Paul were here today he would accuse him to court. He [Owen] said that the Bible has two things. There are some things we ought to check out. They are not really the word of God. I didn’t believe that … A man who believes in evolution never allows the Spirit of God to work … When he came from Uganda he was a keen evangelist and preacher. But … he became keen on picking stones. But he couldn’t explain who were the first people who came from the first apes and what was their colours and what was their tribe, and who was there seeing this. He couldn’t answer.21 Oywaya was an articulate and intelligent man, a product of Maseno school when Carey Francis was headmaster (before he went to Alliance). He was one of the early Kenyan members of the Revival fellowship, whose well-educated pioneers in Uganda, in the 1930s and 1940s, had similarly challenged ‘liberal’ missionaries about their views on the bible.22 3

‘Discipline’: the Establishment of an Ethical Christian Community

The World Missionary Conference, which met in Edinburgh in 1910, occurred just as missionary work in the highlands of Kenya was getting under way. Only one Kenya missionary is recorded as having attended the conference: Charles Hurlburt of the AIM. His participation is ironic in view of AIM’s subsequent disenchantment with the ecumenical movement. The attitudes to the missionary enterprise in Africa as reflected at Edinburgh were consonant with those of the missionaries to Kenya over the next 30 years. In their discussion of the ‘animistic’ religious cultures of Africa, the Edinburgh delegates expressed the common belief that Africa stood at a low level of development, both ethically and intellectually. African religion was represented as rooted in fear, and Africans as in bondage to spirits and to witchcraft.23 In Kenya this remained the pervasive attitude, though increasingly missionaries did come to value certain traditional communal values positively. One of the chief distinguishing characteristics of Christianity, however, was its emphasis on personal responsibility 21  Interview by the author with the Revd Esau Oyawaya, at Maseno, Kenya, 21 January 1974. 22  K. Ward ‘“Obedient Rebels” – the Relationship Between the Early “Balokole” and the Church of Uganda: The Mukono Crisis of 1941’, Journal of Religion in Africa 19 (1989), pp. 194–227. 23  Brian Stanley, The World Missionary Conference, Edinburgh, 1910 (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2009).

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before the one God, and an awareness of sin. Conversion to Christianity was, in this sense, a ‘radical discontinuity’ with traditional ways of life. Opposition to missionary work was likely to come, not so much from dissent from its truth claims, as from a scepticism concerning the individualistic morality and piety which were presented. It was in the areas of social ethics and discipleship that the real crisis points for Protestant missionaries was likely to emerge, revealing radical differences between missionary and convert, but also fissures between the different mission societies, or, indeed, among individual missionaries of the same mission. The impetus for a united church was largely motivated by attempts to minimise such differences, to impress a unified pattern of Christian discipleship on the ‘native’ church in its early stages of formation, but this always remained an ideal. In practice, the missions proved as incapable of establishing a common discipline as of solving theological disagreements. The Africa Inland Mission, the Church of Scotland Mission and the Gospel Missionary Society (a society which did not participate in the Alliance but whose work was concentrated in Kikuyuland) were all insistent on total abstinence from alcohol for converts. In 1913 the CSM had insisted that those joining the catechumenate, and baptismal candidates, should make a pledge to abstain. Dr Arthur hoped that this would become the general policy of the Alliance missions.24 American missionaries agreed, and would also have liked a ban on tobacco. They saw the growing permissiveness of Protestant churches in America and Europe on such issues as symptomatic of the pernicious growth of modernism.25 Unfortunately for Alliance unity, the Anglicans were never convinced that these issues should be imposed as a test at baptism. Bishop Heywood who was personally, like the vast majority of CMS missionaries, a total abstainer, was clear that abstinence could not be made a condition for participation in the sacraments. Moreover, he was aware that the mission in Kenya could not act unilaterally, in isolation from the rest of the Anglican Communion. The Church of Scotland had also expressed its concern about imposing abstinence as a condition for baptism, but had bowed to the insistence of the Scottish missionaries that social conditions in Kenya, for example, the supposed lack of a culture of moderate drinking among the Kikuyu, made their policy essential.26 24  National Christian Council of Kenya (NCCK) Archives. File: Minutes of the United Missionary Conference 1913–19. Minutes for 3 December 1915. 25  A CK Archives, File: Alliance, C. F. Johnson to Bishop Heywood, 30 November 1922. 26  N CCK Archives. Alliance File 2: A. R. Barlow, ‘Report and Recommendations regarding possibilities of uniformity in Church Discipline in the Native Churches of the Alliance’, August 1925.

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The alcohol issue, while revealing different emphases in mission policy, did not become a major divisive issue among the Alliance missions, if only because so little progress was made during the 1920s in establishing a united church. Given that neither joint ordinations nor a united theological college for the training of pastors materialized, a common policy for admission to membership of the church did not become a practical necessity. In contrast, the 1929 controversy over ‘female circumcision’ did sorely test the very basis of the Alliance. The issue was concentrated on missions working in the Kikuyu area and did not directly affect the missions working in the Kavirondo district of western Kenya. A similar practice of female initiation was practised among the Nandi population of western Kenya, among whom AIM was working, but here the issue did not become a major area of conflict at this time. In Kikuyu, it proved a watershed for the development of Kikuyu political consciousness, propelled a significant exodus of Kikuyu Christians from the Protestant churches, and shattered any remaining hope that the Alliance would lead to the creation of a united church. 4

The ‘Female Circumcision’ Crisis of 192927

‘Female circumcision’ was the term used at the time for what would now be termed female genital mutilation (FGM). In Kenya, it was an initiation rite practised by a number of ethnic groups: the Kikuyu, Maasai, Kamba, Meru, Embu and Nandi. The 1929 crisis chiefly concerned the Kikuyu and the closely related Embu and Meru peoples. This meant that the Alliance missions were all centrally involved in the dispute. Initiation rites were always sensitive issues in relations between missions and the people they were trying to convert. Male circumcision among the Kikuyu was a rite of passage signifying the transition from adolescence to adulthood, undertaken by young men in their late teens. Missionaries were uncomfortable with what they considered to be the overly explicit sexual education received by the initiates, the ‘immoral’ practices engendered and the invocation of the spirit world of traditional religion. While they did not object to circumcision of males as such, they did suggest that circumcision might be practised on boys soon after birth. The Kahuhia Church Council of the CMS were asked to consider this change, but the elders decided that it might encourage boys to think that they were ‘allowed to play with girls 27   Jocelyn Murray, ‘The Kikuyu Female Circumcision Controversy’, PhD dissertation, University of California, 1974; Robert Strayer, The Making of Mission Communities in East Africa, 1875–1935 (London: Heinemann, 1978).

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and something bad might occur as a result’.28 This episode illustrates both the complexity of attempting to intervene in communal rites as well as the relative flexibility of the Anglican mission in listening to the opinions of the local church and not insisting on change against their wishes. The other Alliance missions also had no interest in trying to abolish male circumcision. They all supported a gradual process of education, in the hope that the harmful elements of the male initiation ceremonies would eventually be mitigated, and perhaps eliminated. Such gradualism was not seen as possible as far as female circumcision was concerned. The CSM, with its relatively sophisticated hospitals (compared to other missions) and the important leadership role of its medical missionaries, was the first to take a clear stand against female initiation. At first they had experimented with having the operation performed on Christian girls by traditional women circumcisers under missionary auspices. The doctors were so offended by the procedure, however, that they decided that complete prohibition was the only way forward for the Church community. They persuaded their kirk sessions to ban the practice and mounted a campaign among other missions which resulted in the AIM and GMS making similar prohibitions.29 Significantly, CMS did not follow suit. CMS did not have the same level of medical facilities as the Scots and was therefore not confronted to the same extent with the medical problems presented by those women whose operation had gone wrong or who had subsequent problems in childbirth. Also, as we have seen, they were more reluctant to intervene unless they were sure that they the Christian community was fully behind reform of traditional custom. John Arthur, the medical doctor and head of the CSM, felt increasingly that a more robust attitude was needed. Missionaries had been important agents of change in the advancement of the status of women in India (in condemning the practice of suti) and in China (in campaigning against the practice of binding the feet of young girls). For him female circumcision was a similar issue of social justice. Arthur was particularly concerned that the colonial government seemed unwilling and incapable of introducing effective legislation, or even of enforcing existing rules designed to limit the times and conditions under which the female initiation took place.30 Arthur’s outspokenness on these issues brought him into conflict with the Kikuyu Central Association. 28  A CK. Kahuhia Church Council Minutes, 10 November 1924. See Ward, ‘The Development of Protestant Christianity’, p. 155. 29  Edinburgh University Library: Arthur Papers: ‘Memorandum Prepared by the Kikuyu Mission Council on Female Circumcision’, nd [1931], pp. 11ff. 30  G. B. Macintosh, ‘The Scottish Mission in Kenya’, PhD dissertation, University of Edinburgh, 1969, pp. 502ff. For Kenyan Kikuyu, especially Presbyterian, culture, see Derek Peterson,

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KCA consisted largely of young mission converts, commonly known as athomi.31 The term literally means ‘reader’, and was used widely throughout East Africa for those who attended mission schools, were baptised or preparing for baptism, and who prayed in church. From its inception in the early 1920s, the KCA had had a complicated relationship with the CSM over what it saw as CSM’s tendency to attack Kikuyu customs. Moreover, the CSM was a major landowner in Kikuyu land, having developed large-scale mission stations. Were missionaries any different from white settlers, many athomi demanded, in alienating land which the Kikuyu claimed as their heritage? The antagonism towards the CSM contrasted with the good relations of KCA with the CMS. Handley Hooper, the CMS missionary at Kahuhia (in central Kikuyu land), had encouraged the formation of the KCA. By 1929 he had already left Kenya and was the Africa Secretary of CMS in London, where he was to play a role in advising caution over too strident a policy over female circumcision. Between early 1928 and late 1929 (when it was banned by government) the KCA produced an important newspaper Muigwithania.32 One of the possible English translations of this multivalent Kikuyu word is ‘Unifier’ – unity was one of the constant themes of the newspaper. One of the reasons for the KCA’s espousal of the cause of female circumcision, in opposition to Dr Arthur, was its concern that the Kikuyu should think and act as a united people. The largely young Christian organisers of the KCA and the largely young contributors to the magazine were acutely aware of the division between athomi and the elders of the tribe. They wished to heal such generational divisions, as well as the competition between athomi from different missions. One editorial in August 1928 declared, ‘Let us cease to ask each other what school do you belong to? Or are you not a reader. For if there could be an end of things like these the country of the Kikuyu could go ahead in peace.’33 ‘Remember all the things with which we are faced: look and see the insults with which we are insulted. See how that our inheritance is given to strangers, and our houses made to belong to other tribes (or races)’, lamented one Creative Writing: Translation, Book-keeping and the Work of Imagination in Colonial Kenya (Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann, 2004). 31  John Lonsdale, ‘“Listen while I read”: Patriotic Christianity among young Gikuyu’, in T. Falola (ed.), Christianity and Social Change in Africa (Durham NC: Carolina Academic Press, 2005), pp. 563–94. 32  An almost complete set of Muigwithania is contained in the Kenya National Archives, both in the original Kikuyu and in an English translation made by Barlow at the request of the Police Department, who quickly took an interest in the possibly subversive potential of such a newspaper. KNA. DC/MKS 108/13/1. Barlow, the CSM missionary, had, among Europeans, an unrivalled knowledge of the Kikuyu language. 33  ‘An Appeal to Workers and Leaders and Missions’, Muigwithania 1:4 (August 1928), p. 2.

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contributor to Muigwithania, quoting the Old Testament Book of Lamentations, in a translation into Kikuyu from the Swahili Bible (there was as yet no Kikuyu translation). ‘I am a Kikuyu and no water can wash away my Kikuyu nationality’, proclaimed another contributor, G. N. Ndumo. Similarly, Paulo Karanja asked whether Moses had not himself ‘refused to be called the son of Pharaoh’s daughter, but had returned to his own people? So Kikuyu Christians should not behave like “Chomba” [Europeans]. Forgetting their Kikuyu names, and failing to exchange Kikuyu salutations. They should return, like the Prodigal Son, to their father Gikuyu and the House of Mumbi’ (the eponomous founders of the Kikuyu people).34 In 1929, as the missions stepped up their opposition to female circumcision, such sentiments increasingly became a theme in Muigwithania. The newspaper did not have any employed journalists, but relied on the letters of its readers to fill its columns. One contributor commented on a meeting of Kikuyu Christians at the CSM in Tumutumu in March 1929. He bemoaned their denunciation of female circumcision. This filled the old people with ‘great consternation’. The elders used to have pleasure in their ‘children learning letters’, he noted, with some exaggeration, but ‘now they realise that since the girl children have left the control of their fathers they began to become bad and entered the path of immorality’. Nairobi had become a bye-word for prostitution, not least for mission-educated girls. Boys who engaged in such casual sexual encounters were equally to be condemned. They too had abandoned the initiation rites, under the influence of the missions. Mission girls, ashamed that they were still called kirigu (a term for a woman who has not undergone circumcision), left for the towns: ‘If you want to prostitution to increase largely, you should say that circumcision is to be abandoned’, remarked Tabitha Wangui, one of the few female contributors to Muigwithania.35 Such views contrasted starkly with Dr Arthur’s view that uncircumcised mission girls were ‘the vanguard of a new Kikuyu womanhood who are making this great struggle not only for themselves but for posterity’.36 Arthur wrote this to the leading English language newspaper, The East African Standard. It provoked a quick response from Joseph Kang’ethe of the KCA, who correctly interpreted the letter as part of a campaign to ban female circumcision altogether: The Association declares that since the arrival of the missionaries in this country, the natives have never been taught that the Christian creed 34   Muigwithania 1:4 (August 1928), pp. 4, 7. 35  Taken from the 1:7, 1:8, and 2:1 editions of Muigwithania. 36  Macmillan Library, Nairobi, East African Standard, 10 August 1929.

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different in its opinion of circumcised and uncircumcised. Missionaries have tried on many occasions to interfere with the tribal customs and the question is asked whether. Circumcision being the custom of the Kikuyu Christian, he is to be a heathen simply because he is a Kikuyu.37 Kang’ethe’s letter, in turn, produced a rejoinder from those Kikuyu Christians who supported Dr Arthur’s condemnation: We are Kikuyus who have been born in the traditions made by our ancestral fathers to rule the later generations. We have been obedient to those traditions in our former days but when the Word of God enlightened our hearts it made us throw away some of the teachings which the Book of God counts as sin.38 Such ‘sins’ included praying to spirits, polygamy, consulting diviners and charms, leaving corpses without burial, and female circumcision. Strengthened by this support from the local Christian community, Arthur embarked on a tour of mission stations throughout Central Kenya, drumming up support for a campaign to outlaw female circumcision within the churches. These meetings were occasionally disrupted by KCA supporters, and often ended in rancour and confusion. Back at his own mission station of Thogoto, Arthur decided to impose an oath on church teachers, on elders and deacons, in which they abjured the practice of female circumcision.39 This oath became known as the kirore – literally the ‘finger’, by extension ‘signature’. The colonial pass system required all ‘native’ adult males to be in possession of a pass, in which their signature or thumb print (kirore) was inscribed, and which had to be shown to an employer. White settlers had recently been trying to increase the profitability of ‘their’ land by reducing over-grazing, forcing Kikuyu ‘squatters’ to reduce their livestock. They were required to put their kirore on a legal document to signify compliance, on pain of expulsion. Arthur’s kirore was rumoured to be a new land-grab on the part of the missionaries. Suspicion and hostility were spread by the creation of a new song and dance called the Muthirigu, which subjected the mission policy to ridicule. One line of the song rang out: ‘There 37   East African Standard, 29 November 1929. 38  ‘Maciiria na Gikuyu gia Kiambuu na Kuruithia’, 12 September 1929. Translated by the Revd. Lukas Wanjie in K. Ward, ‘The Development’, pp. 156–7. 39  A CK Archives. File: ‘Church of Scotland: Resolution of the Kiambu Kikuyus [sic] on Female Circumcision’, 12 September 1929. See also R. Macpherson, The Presbyterian Church in Kenya (Nairobi: Presbyterian Church of East Africa, 1970), p. 110.

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were ten commandments. When they reached Dr Arthur’s residence, they spread like a gourd.’40 The result of Arthur’s insistence on the oath against female circumcision was a mass defection from the CSM. Those missions which supported Arthur’s stance – the AIM, the Gospel Mission Society, and eventually the Methodists – equally lost substantial numbers of members. The defectors had no intention of renouncing Christianity, however. They formed themselves into a number of groups, in particular the Kikuyu Karing’a Educational Association and the Kikuyu Independent Schools Association (KISA). Both names signify the importance of education for the dissidents. Eventually they were to emerge as independent churches, the Spirit Churches (Arathi), or to form branches of an African Orthodox Church.41 The only mission which failed to fall into line was the CMS. There were differing views among CMS missionaries. Belatedly in 1931, John Comely decided to follow Dr Arthur in imposing a pledge on Christians, with similar defections.42 CMS Christians at Kabare (Congo) briefly advocated a ‘mild’ form of female circumcision, in which the injuries could be reduced as far as possible.43 In his pastoral guidelines to the church Bishop Richard Heywood of Mombasa expressed something of the general uncertainty: ‘I know it is a difficult matter to set aside a custom which has existed for a long while, more particularly when this custom is intimately connected with the people’s lives.’44 While he urged Christians to consider abandoning the practice, as late as June 1931 he was expressing his doubts about simply forbidding female circumcision. He wrote to Arthur wondering if, under certain circumstances, a specifically Christian form of female initiation could be introduced, which might conclude with ‘a superficial operation in private’.45 Worried by the lack of a common discipline within his own church, Heywood eventually issued another conciliatory pastoral letter, arguing for sensitivity in dealing with the issue, but condemning public initiation ceremonies, or anything which caused any ‘physical injury’ to the initiate.46 Clearly this lack of firm direction satisfied

40  Quoted by Arthur himself in a letter to Oldham, in IMC Archives, Box 247, 21.11.1929. 41  For a history of independent churches in Kikuyu, see Francis Githieya, The Freedom of the Spirit: African Indigenous Churches in Kenya (Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1997). 42  K NA Archives. CMS Papers 1/637: Embu Mission Log Book, 7 January 1931. 43  K NA Archives. CMS Papers 1/639: Kabare Mission Log Book 21 July 1931. 44  Bishop’s Pastoral Letter, 1 January 1930, Edinburgh University: Arthur Papers, Appendix 6 of the CMS Memorandum. 45  A CK: File: Church of Scotland Mission, Bishop to Arthur, 16 June 1931. 46  A CK, File: RCA: Bishop’s Pastoral Letter, 19 December 1931.

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neither side in the dispute and Arthur accused the CMS of abandoning the principles of the Alliance. At the same time, the missionary spheres system was breaking down, with Kikuyu Anglicans who happened to move into the territory of other missions refusing to come under the jurisdiction of the ‘kirore’ churches, while CMS continued to have good relations with the Kikuyu Central Association. The nadir for the Alliance came in 1933–4, when CMS engaged in conversations with KISA about sending some of its candidates to the Anglican theological college at Limuru.47 While these conversations eventually came to nothing, the fact that the CMS could even contemplate discussing these matters with defectors from other missions was seen as deeply worrying by Arthur and those who supported his stance. It is not surprising that in 1936 the Alliance itself was wound up. Its continued existence was an irritant and only the Alliance High School remained as a symbol of the ideal of Christian unity which had begun with such optimism in 1913. 5

Christian Unity in Kenya in the Aftermath of the Female Circumcision Crisis

The female circumcision issue had not directly affected Kenyan Christians outside the Kikuyu area, but its repercussions were felt throughout Kenyan Protestantism. The hope of attaining Christian unity, with a Kenyan Protestant church united in doctrine and discipline, had become completely impractical, an eschatological goal, perhaps, but no longer a feasible instrument of ecclesiastical policy. In its desire to create a united Church before denominationalism became entrenched among African Christians, the movement had failed to find ways adequately to consult or include Africans, or to encompass African Christian aspirations. It would be the East African Revival (also known as the Balokole or Saved People) which would bring about new understandings of Christian unity.48 The Balokole movement originated in Uganda and Rwanda and, from the beginning, was African-led (though with missionary support and encouragement).49 It promoted a sense of common identity among saved Christians, which tran47  For the complex negotiations which this involved see K. Ward, ‘The Development’, pp. 208–28. 48  R. K. MacMaster and D. R. Jacob, A Gentle Wind of God: The Influence of the East African Revival (Scotsdale, PA: Herald Press, 2006). 49  Ward and Wild-Wood (eds), The East African Revival.

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scended tribe or denomination and the first revival teams visited Kenya from Uganda in 1936.50 Their message of repentance from sin and holiness of living was congenial to the Keswick-influenced spirituality of many missionaries, but their message of equality between white and black, their unwillingness to accept missionary paternalism, and their appeal to a multi-ethnic African identity, were all quite radical for a colonial society. The first impact of the Revival in Kenya was within the Anglican missions, in western Kenya and in Kikuyuland, but the Balokole no more respected the artificial spheres of missionary denominationalism than did the Kikuyu dissidents in the circumcision crisis and were soon having a profound impact on the CSM Presbyterian and the Methodist churches. Only the AIM managed to insulate its missions from Revival influence. This was partly due to their distrust (since the Modernist crisis) of Anglican influences and partly due to fears of the excesses (potential and real) of a movement which was so unamenable to missionary direction. In the Nandi area of western Kenya, the Revival even provoked a schism from AIM, in which the revivalists joined the Anglican Church. It was an irony that a mission so shaped by revivalism and the holiness movement should have turned its back on this Revival, isolating it from those missions which it had supported in the female circumcision struggle. Another irony is that the Balokole articulated an African Christianity which was not under missionary tutelage. They were, in that sense, kindred spirits to the Kikuyu dissidents of 1929. Yet they found themselves deeply antagonistic towards the Kenyan nationalist movement which fought for independence in post-war Kenya. As Derek Peterson’s work both on Kikuyu Christianity and on the Revival movement has shown, these proved incompatible visions.51 In the 1950s, Revivalists in Kenya were conspicuous in their refusal to take the oaths demanded by the Mau Mau. Oaths administered with the slaughter of goats, they claimed, were incompatible with being saved by the blood of Jesus.52 Nevertheless, the Revivalists should also not be seen as supporters of colonialism, as the testimony of John Gatu makes clear. In independent Kenya Gatu became a leading figure in the Presbyterian Church. As a Kikuyu, he shared the suspicion of missionary motives with the dissidents of 1929 – he was a young boy when the female circumcision crisis broke out. The Revival gave him a new 50  For the introduction of Revival into Kenya in the late 1930s and 1940s, see Ward, ‘The Development’, pp. 312–55. 51  Derek Peterson, Ethnic Patriotism and the East African revival (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012). 52  Dorothy Smoker (in Ambushed by Love [Fort Washington PA: Christian Literature Crusade, 1994]) gives many testimonies by Balokole who lived through the Emergency of the 1950s.

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awareness of the value of co-operation between white and black in ways which transcended the cultural divide. But, like many of the other Protestant leaders in independent Kenya deeply influenced by the Revival (such as Bishop Henry Okullu, Bishop Obadiah Kariuki and Bishop David Gitari), John Gatu combined the fierce cultural patriotism of the earlier Christian dissidents of the 1920s and 1930s, with the intense conviction of sin, forgiveness, equality and transformation, preached by the Revival.53 The Revival movement was deeply anti-structural and thus not really interested in institutional forms of Christian unity. Neither African nationalists nor Balokole were enthusiastic about renewed attempts, in the late 1950s and early 1960s, to bring about a united church of Kenya. The Ecumenical Movement which resulted in the Church of South India in 1947, at the time of Indian independence, had no counterpart in East Africa. The failure of the Alliance in the 1920s and 1930s led to the creation of denominational bodies which gradually developed African leadership, but no such evolution was possible in the Alliance itself. Africans consequently had no interest in what came to be characterized as a restrictive missionary club. In 1945 the Kenya Christian Council was formed, which from the beginning included African representation, but this was a successor, not of the Alliance, but of the Kenya Missionary Council, founded in 1923 to discuss social and political issues. It continues to flourish as the National Council of Churches of Kenya (NCCK), but it has never been concerned with church unity schemes. Protestant Christianity in Kenya continues to be dominated by the successors to the Alliance: the Anglican Church of Kenya, the Presbyterian Church of East Africa, the Methodist Church of Kenya, and the Africa Inland Church. By and large these churches remain on good terms. With the exception of the AIC, they are deeply influenced in their spirituality and evangelism by the East African Revival. All face challenges from modern Pentecostal forms of Christianity, whose appeal is largely to the young. None of the churches is really interested in realising the initial vision of a united Protestant Church. Issues of theological liberalism or conservatism continue to rumble. Kenyan Christians, of all varieties, are united in their opposition to female genital mutilation, but new ethical issues are hotly debated, not least new aspects of sexual ethics in the light of the AIDS pandemic. In addition the emergence of same-sex relationships as a human-rights concern has become a theological issue every bit as problematic for the churches as the controversies of 1929.

53  John Gatu, ‘A personal experience of the revival’, in Ward and Wild-Wood (eds), The East African Revival, pp. 33–40.

Chapter 13

The Kikuyu Conference and Global South Anglicanism: for What Does the Anglican Communion Stand? Joseph Galgalo The Anglican Communion as an organization of churches has had an ‘awkward existence’ from its very beginning.1 The very expression Anglican Communion is in itself ambiguous and defies any neat definition. Early attempts at definition have remained just that – attempts. The Lambeth Conference of 1930 defined the expression ‘Anglican Communion’ as ‘a fellowship within the one Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church, of those duly constituted dioceses, provinces or regional Churches in communion with the See of Canterbury’ (Resolution 49).2 What precisely it means to be ‘in communion with the See of Canterbury’ or what such communion means in practice has always remained a matter of interpretation. It should be noted that the 1930 gathering was not the first to employ the descriptive tag ‘Anglican Communion’. The Lambeth Conference of 1867 used the term with reference to ‘the Anglican branch of the 1  By Global South I have here in mind the Anglican Provinces in the Global South located in Africa, Asia, the Pacific and South America. The meetings of the leaders of these churches are usually referred to as ‘South to South Encounters’. The first South to South Encounter took place in Limuru, Kenya, in 1994 and the second in Kuala Lumpur in 1997. A third meeting took place in Egypt in 2005 where the theme was ‘One, Holy, Catholic and Apostolic Church: Being a Faithful Church for such a Time as This’. The fourth South to South Encounter took place in Singapore in April 2010 with leaders from Provinces of the Global South and other mission partners, who described themselves as ‘unequivocally committed to the apostolichistoric faith’, while the fifth South to South Encounter, held in Bangkok, Thailand, in July 2012, had the theme ‘Be Transformed by the Renewing of the Mind to Obedience of Faith for Holistic Mission in a Radically Changing Global Landscape’, based on Romans 12:1–2; and 2 Tim. 4:7. There were also many meetings of Global South Primates that took place in between the South to South Encounter Conferences. These Churches believe they represent ‘more than 70 percent of the active membership of the worldwide Anglican Communion’. See, for example, Article 6 of the official Communiqué of the meeting of the Primates of the Global South Anglicans held in September 2006 in Kigali, Rwanda. See http://www.globalsouth anglican.org/index.php/blog/comments/kigali_communique (accessed 8 March 2016). 2  See http://www.anglicancommunion.org/resources/document-library/lambeth-conference/ 1930/resolution-49-the-anglican-communion?author=Lambeth+Conference&year=1930 (accessed 8 March 2016).

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Church Catholic’ (Resolution 3).3 This gives the impression that, even though there were bishops from beyond the British Isles and the USA, the expression ‘Anglican Communion’ must originally have applied to the English, Irish, Scottish and the American churches as a collective description for these four churches that shared a common cultural heritage.4 The precise meaning of the phrase Anglican Communion aside, it is even more difficult to place a finger on the exact ecclesial nature of the communion of churches that collectively constitutes the Anglican Communion. The Communion lacks structures that are authoritative enough to order the common life of the Communion. As is expressed in the final report of the Windsor Continuation Group, the problem can be framed as an ‘Anglican ecclesial deficit’ with regard to the lack of ‘structures which can make decisions which can carry force in the life of the Churches of the Communion, or even give any definitive guidance to them’.5 A cursory look at the background of the Anglican Communion can help explain this ecclesial uncertainty. Anglicanism as a distinct branch of the universal church took shape in the sixteenth century, principally during the reigns of King Henry VIII and, more definitively, Queen Elizabeth I. Through carefully crafted legislation the new Anglican polity came to depend on two key documents: the Thirty-Nine Articles (a revised version of the earlier FortyTwo Articles) and a modified edition of the Book of Common Prayer of 1552. Both documents provide a rough guide to the form and shape of the Anglican patrimony, particularly belief and worship, that sought to accommodate the whole population of England in as comprehensive a settlement as possible. The compromise Elizabethan religious settlement may not have been hailed as ‘all encompassing’ by every warring party, but it was accommodating and broad enough, avoiding, in the words of Bishop Stephen Neill ‘the overdefinitions both of the Protestant left wing and of the right wing Tridentine Catholicism.’6 The intention was to bring on board, in one broad sweep, all who were prepared to conform. As is the case with any compromise, the 3  See http://www.anglicancommunion.org/resources/document-library/lambeth-conference/ 1867/resolution-3?author=Lambeth+Conference&year=1867 (accessed 8 March 2016). 4  Colin Podmore shows that the term came into use in the 1840s when some mission agencies of the Church of England started using it alongside such other descriptors as Protestant Episcopal Churches or Reformed Catholicism (Aspects of Anglican Identity (London: Church House, 2005), pp. 34–7). 5  Windsor Continuation Group, ‘Report to the Archbishop of Canterbury’, Para. 51. http:// www.anglicancommunion.org/media/100354/The-Windsor-Continuation-Group.pdf ? author=The+Windsor+Process (accessed 8 March 2016). 6  Stephen Neill, Anglicanism (London: Mowbray, 1978), p. 119.

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settlement proved both disturbing and comforting at the same time. Being generously open and accommodating in reaching out in equal measure across all divides is by no means fully satisfying to any side of the divide. Perhaps the lasting legacy of the compromise was in laying a foundation for a characteristically Anglican ‘way of being church’ that fittingly has come to be called the via media. Yet rather ironically, and for the very reason of trying to be ‘all things to all men’, the Communion today has also earned such derisive descriptions as a ‘church living on the bridge’.7 Rather than being the ‘connecting centre’ for the Catholic and Reformed traditions, it constitutes more of a ‘melting pot’ of ideas that offers a compromise between Christian doctrinal orthodoxy and the demands of secular culture. The ‘awkward existence’ of the Communion, and, for that matter, the churches of the Anglican Communion, was fundamental to the writing of Ecclesia Anglicana: For what does She Stand?8 The title of Bishop Frank Weston’s 1913 open letter to the Bishop of St Albans constituted a reaction to the resolutions of a conference held in June of that year in Kikuyu in the then British East Africa. The question remains as current for the churches of the Anglican Communion today, as it was for the Church of England when Bishop Weston raised it. It is perhaps valid to suggest that ‘for what does Anglicanism stand?’ has remained the most vexing question for Anglicans of all contexts and times. The triumph of Cranmerian liturgy and the Thirty Nine Articles with their Reformed doctrinal leanings and their attendant formularies may have succeeded in affording broad accommodations, but they were never able to bridge the chasm that so divides the liberal church that coexists cheek by jowl with evangelicalism on one hand and Tridentine Catholicism on the other. Today we have an Anglican branch of the universal church that is typically pluralistic and accommodates varied forms of churchmanship, each insisting that it belongs to one and the same body. The players may change, but the fundamental issues endure. Today, the points of contention are varied, encompassing such broad matters as ecclesial authority, the interpretation of Scripture, and most recently, the more pressing issues of gender and the priesthood and of human sexuality. In this chapter, I address the contemporary reverberation of Bishop Weston’s question, which has continued to preoccupy the present-day Global South 7  See also Stephen W. Sykes, The Integrity of Anglicanism (London & Oxford: Mowbray, 1978), p. 85. 8  London: Longmans, 1914; available at http://anglicanhistory.org/weston/ecclesia_anglicana .html (accessed 10 March 2016).

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Anglican churches as they continue to negotiate and determine their purposes, place and contribution to the family of churches that ‘belong’ to the wider Anglican Communion. The Kikuyu Conference of 1913 will provide us with our broad framework, the framework within which Bishop Weston’s question and its continued relevance and urgency can be understood and clarified. Before delving into the case of Kikuyu, perhaps an earlier ‘Anglican dispute’ with similar historical precedents is worth considering, particularly with regard to how the dispute ultimately was settled. This concerns Bishop John William Colenso (1814–83), missionary bishop of Natal, South Africa, from 1853 to 1883. A critic of conventional missionary methods, Colenso became a distinguished advocate of the rights of the native population. In 1861 he issued a controversial commentary on the study of the Epistle to the Romans, whose central thesis was the refutation of the doctrines of substitutionary atonement and eternal damnation.9 A year later he published The Pentateuch and the Book of Joshua Critically Examined in which he challenged the historicity of the Pentateuchal narratives, their Mosaic authorship and the conventional interpretations and general applications of these books.10 Colenso also adopted a radical view of marriage and such ideas as polygenism that led him to become increasingly sympathetic to the practice of polygamy common among his native converts.11 Colenso’s radical ideas triggered a major crisis in the Anglican world, challenging the whole structure of Anglican ministry, teaching and authority.12 When Colenso was accused of heresy by the cathedral chapter of Pietermaritzburg and subsequently excommunicated by Bishop Robert Gray of Cape Town, he successfully challenged his deposition in an English civil court and resumed his bishopric. The case raised many questions including issues of jurisdiction and the relationship between the various Anglican Churches and their dioceses. The most important issue was perhaps the obvious intra-Anglican administrative deficit. The Communion currently lacks an authoritative centre to settle disputes of a doctrinal, organizational or administrative nature with 9    St. Paul’s Epistle to the Romans: Newly Translated and Explained from a Missionary Point of View (Pietermaritzburg: Elukanyeni Mission Press, 1861). 10   The Pentateuch and the Book of Joshua Critically Examined (London: Longman, 1862–3). This title turned out to be only the first volume of a massive seventeen volume publication. 11  For an exposition that basically holds that various human races possibly could not have originated from a common ancestry contrary to the biblical position of monogenesis, see, e.g. Colin Kidd, The Forging of Races: Race and Scripture in the Protestant Atlantic World, 1600–2000 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006), pp. 153–6. 12  William Sachs, The Transformation of Anglicanism: From State Church to Global Communion (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993), p. 142.

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any finality or binding authority if such disputes cut across provincial jurisdictions. Colenso may have been regarded as eccentric by his contemporaries, but his case served to expose a clear deficiency with regard to the resolution of conflict between the churches of the Communion. The ‘Elizabethan Settlement’ was not intended to deal with the myriad challenges that face global Anglicanism today. A more acceptable settlement has remained elusive, not least because of increasing diversity and lack of an authoritative centre that is able to rally member churches around a common doctrinal and ecclesial bond. Ever since the Colenso affair prompted the first Lambeth Conference in 1867, successive Conferences have tried to identify the ‘bonds of affection’ that can give shape to a definitive Anglicanism. These attempts have amounted merely to a continuous search for ‘common mind’ across the Communion, a process that, far from providing a common centre that can hold the Churches of the Communion together, has often left them more divided. The Kikuyu controversy similarly laid bare an ‘ecclesial deficiency’ that lends urgency to Weston’s questioning of Anglicanism’s ecclesial purpose. The nineteenth and early twentieth centuries witnessed the rise of an extensive mission enterprise across the globe. Mission societies took charge of exporting the gospel (and their denominational brand) to various colonial settings. The East African region fell under the political sway of the British Empire from mid-nineteenth century onwards, prompting an upsurge in missionary activity. Over time, representatives of almost every Western denomination, including Anglicans, Presbyterians, Methodists, Adventists, Moravians, Roman Catholics, Lutherans, Quakers, Baptists and non-aligned churches, would be found competing for a share of this virgin mission field. The inevitable overcrowding increasingly attested to the need for a common front in the propagation of the gospel and planting of new churches. Early attempts at ‘church unity’ in British East Africa saw the signing of a number of comity agreements between different groups.13 It was these comity arrangements that gave birth

13  Efforts at cooperation produced a series of conferences including the United Missionary Conference at Maseno in January 1909 and the United Missionary Conference in Nairobi in June 1909. The latter had as its main agenda ‘the possibility of forming a single native church in British East Africa’ and called for ‘the orderly development, organization, and establishment of a united self-supporting, and self-propagating Native Church be a chief aim in all mission work’ (Resolution VIII). For details of the record of proceedings of these Conferences and resolutions of other such Conferences see G. H. Mungeam (ed.), Kenya: Selected Historical Documents 1884–1923 (Nairobi: East Africa Publishing House, 1978), pp. 148–313.

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to the proposal for a federation of various mission churches and became an important precursor to the Kikuyu Conference of 1913. 1

The Kikuyu Conference 1913

The Kikuyu Conference was held at a Presbyterian Mission Station in the town of Kikuyu, near Nairobi, in a classroom made available by the Church of Scotland Mission under the leadership of Dr John W. Arthur. The Conference had nearly 100 per cent representation of all the Protestant missions working in British East Africa and Uganda, bringing together representatives of the Church Missionary Society (Anglican); the Church of Scotland, the Africa Inland Mission (a non-denominational group from America); The Friends’ Industrial Mission (Quakers); the United Methodists, the Lutheran Mission and the Seventh Day Adventists. The discussions at the Conference culminated in resolutions on the unity of the native churches and the federation of missions. Building on the momentum from earlier conferences, Kikuyu sought to translate the gains made in the conference rooms into a reality for the mission field. This desire is perhaps nowhere more fittingly captured than in the words of Bishop John Jamieson Willis of Uganda (representing CMS and chair of the conference) who, in his opening remarks pointed out that ‘theory was now to be translated into practice’.14 The Kikuyu Conference was indeed in many ways a continuation of the earlier United Missionary Conference held in Nairobi in June 1909. Here the possibility of a united native church had been discussed and a committee comprised of representatives from various mission societies was set up to draft a memorandum that would inform a proposed constitution to govern a united native church or at least a federation of missions that could be formed in the first instance. The draft memorandum completed in 1910 formed the basis of discussions at the Kikuyu Conference. The delegates unanimously agreed to concentrate on the possibility of forming a federation of mission societies and postponed the discussions on the formation of a united native church until the federation was in place. The conference then devoted time to framing the draft memorandum as a constitution which, if accepted by the delegates and then the sending mission bodies, would become the framework that would guide the work of the proposed federation of missions and eventually the establishment of a united native church. The vision of one church was driven not only by the desire to overcome denominational differences that had real potential 14  Mungeam (ed.), Kenya: Selected Historical Documents, p. 183.

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to confuse Africans who were willing to embrace Christianity, but also from a need to achieve a united Christian front to effectively combat potential threats from both Islam and African traditional religions. It was also hoped that cooperation between the various missions would solve the particular challenges presented by African converts who migrated to an area where the denomination into which they had been baptized was not present. The conference was a great success in preparing the ground for a possible union and carefully navigated many contentious issues, especially those of a doctrinal nature, which otherwise would have derailed the efforts towards unity. The progress made by Kikuyu towards ultimate union was soon to become the subject of bitter dispute among the Anglican bishops who were serving within the larger East African region. A controversy ensued as soon as Bishop Frank Weston of Zanzibar received the details of the scheme for a federation of missions. Bishop Weston was the only one of the three bishops working in the larger East African region who did not attend the Kikuyu Conference. He accused Bishop Peel of Mombasa and Bishop Willis of Uganda of a gross departure ‘from a fundamental principle of church order’, by inviting members of ‘non-Episcopal bodies’ to their celebration of Holy Communion.15 Weston’s protest may have been triggered by proceedings from the conference, but it was equally a reaction to the ‘ecclesial deficiency’ that manifested itself in the continual ‘crisis of Anglican life’. He accused the Church of England of being guilty of departing from apostolic teachings, historical foundations and church discipline in search of so-called ‘comprehensiveness’. It was these contentions that lay behind his attempt to determine the raison d’être for the Ecclesia Anglicana. Before examining Weston’s contentions, let us first put the resolutions arising from Kikuyu in their proper context. The conference, under a section termed ‘fundamental provisions’, defined the basis of the federation as acceptance of the Holy Scriptures as the authoritative word of God, the deity of Christ, and the Nicene and Apostles’ Creeds as sufficient statements of faith. It resolved to recognize the Christian status of each other’s communicants, and to administer the sacraments of baptism and Holy Communion through visible liturgical forms. The participants also committed themselves to work towards a common form of church organization and to facilitate exchange in pulpit ministry. In celebrating the successful formulation of the proposed scheme of federation, and perhaps inspired by the desire practically to be one church, the participants joined together in a service of Holy Communion at which a Presbyterian minister preached 15  Frank Weston, The Case Against Kikuyu: A Study in Vital Principles (London: Longmans, 1914), pp. 32–3.

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and the Anglican Bishop of Mombasa presided. It is said that, without exception, those present from as many denominations as were represented by the delegates of the various mission bodies, received the Communion that was consecrated and administered by the bishop. We do not have evidence that the Quakers abstained, a claim often made in some literature written ex post, although if Quakers really did receive, it would be a most strange Communion indeed! In two major communications, beside a number of other publications, Bishop Weston expressed his displeasure with the resolutions passed by the conference and especially with the actions of the two Anglican Bishops at Kikuyu. He first made a formal appeal to the Archbishop of Canterbury, Randall Davidson, to ‘obtain from [the two Bishops] … a complete and categorical recantation of the errors which they have taught in word and action’, or alternatively to provide an opportunity for the matter to be judged in an open ecclesial court presided over by the archbishop and to be assisted by twelve of his comprovincial bishops.16 Weston’s charge against the two bishops was that, by admitting members of the ‘non-Episcopal’ bodies to their Communion, the two broke church order and thereby broke fellowship with the universal church, and in so doing, crossed over to a side that, having rejected fellowship with episcopacy, was in violation of Christ’s teaching. The two bishops were in this regard, according to Weston, guilty of ‘grievous faults of propagating heresy and committing schism’.17 This point of contention stands out very clearly in an open letter that Weston later wrote to Bishop Edgar Jacob of St Albans. Although he specified that he had charged the ‘Bishops of Mombasa and Uganda with heresy in their teaching of the meaning and value of Episcopacy’, he also took a broad swipe at the church decrying what he described as ‘the unfitness of the Ecclesia Anglicana, in her present state, for any serious or permanent mission work ... Is it not quite clear then that unless the Ecclesia Anglicana purge herself of heresy and eschew schism, her missions have no future?’18 This question and other concerns at the heart of Weston’s contention have currently taken on a new emphasis and urgency especially among the Anglican churches in the Global South. Before examining the persistent echo of Weston’s questions among these churches, we first need to discuss Archbishop Davidson’s response to Bishop Weston’s appeal. 16  Mungeam (ed.), Kenya: Select Historical Documents, pp. 191–2. 17  Mungeam (ed.), Kenya: Select Historical Documents, p. 191. 18  Frank Weston, Ecclesia Anglicana, p. 8.

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In 1915 Davidson issued a seventy-page publication in response to the Kikuyu controversy. Perhaps to the disappointment of many interested parties, he failed to address any of the pertinent doctrinal or even pastoral issues that either informed the resolutions of the conference or were raised in various responses to it. In the document, the archbishop emphasized, almost to the exclusion of everything else, the need for unity, cooperation and understanding in the arduous task of fostering and safeguarding unity within the Anglican Communion. He faulted both parties, however, by rejecting Weston’s view that non-Episcopalians were simply ‘outside’ the Church of Christ, while also stating that Willis and Peel had been wrong if they had formally sanctioned the reception of Holy Communion in circumstances where non-Episcopal ministers presided or consecrated and administered the elements. Needless to say, neither side was satisfied by this outcome. As an intervention, the archbishop’s effort came too late, and lacked precise guidance or emphatic authority as to the way forward. Given the ‘ecclesial deficiency’ that characterizes the Communion, the archbishop’s failure to address the dispute satisfactorily, let alone settle it with any finality, was predictable and indeed, even expected. It is clear that if indeed the Bishops of Mombasa and Uganda were working for a full realization of a united native church, nothing from within the Communion could have hindered the attainment of such a goal. Their greater challenge would have been the complexity of implementing such a scheme given the vast differences that set apart the participating denominations. This, rather than the Communion’s intervention, ensured the eventual death of the dream of a united church in East Africa, with the various denominations today distinctly established and working independently of each other. It is to the credit of Kikuyu, however, that these churches today enjoy great working relationships with one another and are able to present a common front in such matters as social justice, most notably through the agency of the National Council of Churches. Since Kikuyu, Anglican churches in the Global South have witnessed a century of tremendous growth with well over half of the thirty-four provinces and four united churches of the Communion now located in these regions. These provinces are autonomous, as is the case with all Anglican national and regional churches, but are all in communion with the See of Canterbury as part of the worldwide fellowship of churches known as the Anglican Communion. Times have changed and so have the ‘connecting’ structures of the Communion, but not the complexity of what it means to be ‘Anglican’: the question of what Ecclesia Anglicana really stands for is as fresh and relevant as when it was first raised by Bishop Weston.

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Weston did not simply protest against a new form of inclusiveness but expressed frustration against what he saw as Anglican inaction in the face of a rising tide of liberal theology. He lamented that the church had become ‘a society for shirking vital issues’19 and an institution that could conveniently be changed or modified to accommodate modern trends. Despite frequently coming from more evangelical positions, the Global South churches are Westonian in spirit and share Weston’s frustrations regarding the Communion’s inability to address new challenges that are a consequence of Anglican pluralism. Both Weston and the Global South churches see Anglicanism as constantly stretching theological boundaries and their pastoral application beyond acceptable limits. Ironically both the Kikuyu Conference participants and Weston were in genuine search of ‘Anglican coherence’ – a principle of which Anglicanism seems characteristically incapable. The Global South churches also share another important characteristic with Kikuyu: a genuine search for ‘authentic mission’ and the unity of the church. Both are also keen to achieve this goal without compromising the gospel through unnecessary accommodations. 2

The Response of the Global South Churches

Peel and Willis were convinced that while Kikuyu, in a typical Anglican spirit, was generously accommodating, it nevertheless still remained Anglican to the core in that it sustained the principles of Anglican coherence set out in the Lambeth Quadrilateral of 1888. It must also be pointed out that if Weston’s concern was genuine, his vision of Anglicanism was rather idealistic. It assumed the existence of some universal standards, a definitive administrative authority and ecclesial structures that should presumably guard and guarantee the preservation and perpetuation of such standards. The Global South Anglican churches (themselves divided on many issues) often contend for a coherence that is difficult to attain and assume that the reality of Anglican pluralism can easily be reined in. These churches believe the Communion’s instruments of unity should be strengthened. In particular, the Archbishop of Canterbury should have the authority to discipline errant members if they are to stay in communion with the See of Canterbury. They also contend that resolutions arising from the Primates’ Meetings and the Lambeth Conferences should be binding on all members. Their desire is to strengthen the accountability of Anglican churches to one another. These churches thus share Westonian 19  Weston, Ecclesia Anglicana, p. 8.

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assumptions that are far from the reality of what the Communion really is or is capable of becoming. Broadly speaking, the Global South’s contention with the present-day Anglican establishment can be summarized as follows. The South sees the West as guilty of betraying the foundations of Anglican faith. It accuses the West of becoming increasingly liberal and in the process relegating to the periphery all traditionally accepted markers of Christianity including the authority of Scripture, without which Christianity stands radically redefined. The rallying call for the Global South churches is that the emerging ‘secular Christianity’ must be resisted in all its forms. To save Anglicanism, the emerging secularism must be encountered with uncompromising loyalty to the authority of the canonical Scriptures.20 The assumption here is similar to Weston’s, namely that the Anglican patrimony has bequeathed a particular confessional position that must be believed, guarded and perpetuated. The Westonian position holds that the early church, drawing on Jesus’ teaching, developed episcopal structures. In this regard Weston was convinced that episcopacy was the only true ecclesial government in which bishops should collegially preserve, perpetuate and defend the regula fidei. The Global South position holds that Anglicanism has historically been a form of biblical Christianity, and that this must be preserved in order to deliver an authentic mission. From the 1990s onward these churches initiated structured engagements with one another primarily for fellowship and mutual support, but also taking every opportunity to encourage each other in taking bold steps in the defence of the gospel and the cause of an authentic Anglican mission. Individual, provinces driven by theological and pastoral persuasions, soon took unilateral initiatives going beyond the ‘South to South Encounters’ to ‘cross border interventions’, with some Provinces like Rwanda and Nigeria setting up parallel jurisdictions within some of the sees of The Episcopal Church.21 For the Global South churches, the historical position is sustained by the argument that Scripture alone was received as the authoritative source of belief and practice, and that no other revelation provides grounds for change. At 20  These sentiments are evident in almost all the final statements of the Global South Primates meetings as well as the statements of the South to South Encounter conferences (see footnote 1 above). 21  With time, there were attempts at validating these actions through appeals to the Archbishop of Canterbury to support a framework where ‘Alternative Primatial Oversight’ could be provided to congregations in North America that requested such oversight. See Article 10(a) of the official communiqué of the meeting of the Primates of the Global South held in Kigali, Rwanda, September 2006 at: http://www.globalsouthanglican.org/ index.php/blog/comments/kigali_communique (accessed 8 March 2016).

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the third South to South Encounter, for example, guided by the theme, ‘One, Holy, Catholic and Apostolic Church’, the meeting firmly reiterated this conviction that there is only one ‘universal faith that was “once for all” entrusted to the apostles and handed down subsequently from generation to generation (Jude 3) [and that] therefore every proposed innovation must be measured against the plumb line of Scripture and the historic teaching of the Church’.22 The assumption here is that the Anglican Communion through its college of bishops must exercise this responsibility to preserve the church from error, despite the fact that the Communion cannot enforce uniformity because of its ecclesial deficiency. The concerted effort by the Global South churches constitutes a reaction to what they see as the Communion’s official sanctioning of ‘departure from historic faith’. Held together and driven by a common interest to preserve the ‘true gospel’, they have continued to use their increasing numerical might to influence, in their favour, resolutions of such important forums as the Lambeth Conference and Primates’ Meetings. Since the 1990s they have also been busy pushing for a sort of realignment within the Communion. This agenda is driven particularly by some primates but also through structured ‘South to South Encounter’ forums. These forums currently seem to be giving way to a distinctively different form of a global movement, GAFCON. What began with an initial conference in Jerusalem in 2008 is not an exclusively Global South affair but constitutes what the organizers designate as a Fellowship of Confessing Anglicans. At the broader Communion level, a number of adjustments have continued to be made to address the existing Communion’s ecclesial deficiency. The Communion’s instruments of unity, for example, have been clearly defined, although none, including the latest of these instruments – the Primates’ Meeting – has any definitive authority. The lack of an authoritative centre notwithstanding, the different centres of authority within the Communion, and especially the Global South churches, often make pronouncements, demands or invitations to the Communion as if it were capable of taking a common course of action. There exists an idealistic (an often optimistic) assumption of sorts regarding the nature and operation of the Communion, which is rather perplexing. This is the assumption that there is still a ‘coherent Anglicanism’. Based on 22  Report of the Third Anglican Global South to South Encounter, Red Sea (Egypt), 25–30 October 2005, entitled ‘A Third Trumpet from the South’, Resolution 16. http://www .globalsouthanglican.org/index.php/blog/comments/third_trumpet_communique_ from_3rd_south_to_south_encounter (accessed 8 March 2016).

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the assumption of coherence, churches that object to innovations expect the Communion, through its instruments of unity, to rein in errant members. Coupled with this, there is also the assumption that there exists an Anglican theological method which is dependent on specific interpretation of Scripture deemed to be the ‘faithful position’. Strong sentiments have been expressed emphasizing the need to uphold the traditional beliefs of the church and that all the dioceses of the Communion must strive to guard against the spirit of the age and doctrinal innovations, and to uphold the so-called Vincentian Canon, that is, that which ‘has been believed everywhere, at all times, and by all’ (quod ubique, quod semper, quod ab omnibus, creditum est). Jude v.3, which urges believers ‘to contend for the faith that was once for all entrusted to God’s holy people’, for example, was often Archbishop Peter Akinola’s favourite verse, insisting on the preservation and faithful propagation of faith that had been received. Continued emphases on the need to have a strong theological education to guarantee this last point is also common among the leaders of the churches of Global South. It assumes that if such is faithfully applied, all cultural and contextual differences will fade away as each falls in line and automatically conforms to the ‘faithful position’ of interpretation and application. This position assumes that there can be a monolithic approach to resolution of conflict on matters of doctrine and practice. In turn, it is assumed, this should eliminate heterodoxy, forge a common Anglican identity and preserve the common Anglican ecclesial heritage. We tend to forget that the Communion as presently constituted has structures that are useful for nothing much more than the mandate to determine items of prayer and a programme of fellowship for the various assemblies of the Instruments. It should also not be forgotten that if Anglicanism once had some form of coherence – whether doctrinal as with The Thirty-Nine Articles or liturgical as with the Book of Common Prayer – these have long been relegated to artifacts or relics of sorts, as most provinces, if not all, have through various adaptations embraced revisions that have given them new identities. In most provinces new liturgies – some with hardly any resemblance to the 1662 Book of Common Prayer – have been developed to accommodate contextual needs and some churches, for example, the Anglican Church of Canada, have provided liturgies for such innovations as same sex unions. Where once Anglican churches might have shared a common liturgical heritage or a historical bond, there is now no guarantee that we necessarily have a ‘common ecclesial identity’. The Communion is presently facing formidable challenges of serious doctrinal integrity and theological pluralism where member churches hold more divergent views than those that they share in common. The continual sense

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of ‘Anglican crisis’ has often been seen as a necessary tension, a natural result of comprehensiveness. At the 1948 Lambeth Conference, for example, the group working on the unity of the Church, in what seems a bold defence of comprehensiveness stated that ‘deliverance from tension’ was not an option as ‘tension’ was of the essence of the coherence of Anglican mission. The Group’s report states in part: The Anglican Communion is able to reach out in different directions and so to fulfill its special vocation as one of God’s instruments for the restoration of the visible unit of His whole Church. If at the present time one view were to prevail to the exclusion of all others, we should be delivered from our tensions, but only at the price of missing our opportunity and our vocation.23 It is strange to suggest that churches of the Anglican Communion today share a coherent mission and even more so to suggest that holding divergent views (on such important matters as doctrine) is a form of divine vocation! There is an urgent need to move beyond assumptions of Anglican coherence, and tackle head-on the current reality of Anglican pluralism that so divides the Communion. There is a need to acknowledge the inadequacy of the current structures that are the source of our glaring ‘ecclesial deficiency’, and to seek alternative means for intra-Anglican engagements. This assumption will not occur in the current state of disintegration, which makes a formal realignment inevitable and even welcome. To address these challenges we must raise the question of what it means to be an Anglican or what it means to belong to a global Communion that is as diverse in its theological persuasions as its varied contexts and cultures. What is the centre that can hold Anglicans together? As Weston predicted, it is unwise to answer this question as simply ‘comprehensiveness’. The key question at Kikuyu was what it meant to be a church in a multi-denominational or a ‘pluralistic’ mission context and Anglicans today are called to determine what it means to be Anglican in a multi-cultural, pluralistic Anglican global context. Can the Communion enforce, guard and perpetuate a common faith, vision or purpose? Even as Anglicans address these basic questions, they face the sobering reality that Anglicanism is not monolithic or coherent in theology, beliefs, traditions or practices. The Anglican Communion, born as it was in crisis, has neither known, for all its long history, what it means to be free from the ‘Anglican crisis of life’ nor proved capable of solving any of 23  See Sykes, The Integrity of Anglicanism, p. 18.

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its crises primarily because of its ‘ecclesial deficiency’. This complexity requires a radical rethinking of what it means to belong to the Anglican Communion and demands honest answers and practical solutions. In what follows I make an outline of what the Communion could consider as a way forward in addressing its current state of disintegration. 3

A Way Forward for the Anglican Communion

The first and most urgent thing for the Communion to do (through existing structures) is to conduct an honest assessment of its current precarious existence and come to terms with the reality of its irrevocable fragmentation. This fact became very clear at the 2008 Lambeth Conference when over 200 bishops, mainly from African provinces, boycotted it. Barely two months before the Lambeth Conference most Global South church leaders attended the first Global Anglican Future Conference (GAFCON) in Jerusalem. Beside the interesting choice of name, which speaks volumes about discontent with the prevailing state of the Communion, the official communiqué released as the ‘Jerusalem Declaration’ explicitly states: ‘We reject the authority of those churches and leaders who have denied the orthodox faith in word or deed.’24 Although the statement in the preamble repudiates ‘breaking away from the Anglican Communion’, it also makes it clear that the Conference was in the first place prompted by the need to respond to three crisis of which the second is stated as ‘the declaration by provincial bodies in the Global South that they are out of communion with bishops and churches that promote … a false gospel.’25 The reference to a ‘false gospel’ is here most likely to refer to liberal views on homosexuality, but perhaps more specifically echoes the 2003 warning of the Primates of the Anglican Communion to ECUSA (now TEC) for electing Gene Robinson, a divorced priest in an active gay relationship, to the bishopric of New Hampshire. The Primates lamented that Gene Robinson’s consecration would ‘tear the fabric of our Communion at its deepest level’.26 The consecration came to pass and the Global South churches have since considered the Communion to be fractured. The designation ‘impaired Communion’ has since 24   The Jerusalem Declaration, 29 June 2008, Article 13, http://fca.net/resources/thecomplete-jerusalem-statement (accessed 8 March 2016). 25  The Jerusalem Declaration, Preamble. 26  Statement by the Primates of the Anglican Communion, Lambeth Palace, 16 October 2003. http://www.webcitation.org/6CkrXq48O (accessed 8 March 2016).

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become a common means of reference to the disrupted relations within the Communion.27 The split is already complete with some Global South provinces providing episcopal oversight to some congregations in the West that have broken off from their mother dioceses. Also, the Global South Anglican Churches are currently busy putting structures in place to formalize a split that seems to be irreversible. At a meeting of the Primates’ Steering Committee held in Cairo in February 2014, the Global South, seeing itself as the emerging definitive Anglican Communion, announced: As we reviewed the current situation, we recognized that the fabric of the Communion was torn at its deepest level [and] as a result, our Anglican Communion is currently suffering from … dysfunctional ‘instruments of unity.’ [And] We decided to establish a Primatial Oversight Council … to provide pastoral and primatial oversight to dissenting individuals, parishes, and dioceses in order to keep them within the Communion.28 The Global South is also supporting the establishment of alternative instruments of unity particularly through the recently formed Global Fellowship of Confessing Anglicans. At the last GAFCON meeting held in Nairobi in October 2013, this was clearly expressed in the final communiqué called The Nairobi Communiqué, which in part states: ‘We [GAFCON] believe we have acted as an important and effective instrument of Communion during a period in which other instruments of Communion have failed both to uphold gospel priorities in the Church, and to heal the divisions among us’ (Final Statement, see Introduction, paragraph 3).29 It should be noted that GAFCON already envisions a realigned Anglicanism and in this regard sees itself as ‘a movement for unity among faithful Anglicans’30 and is not necessarily searching any longer for the unity of the current Anglican Communion. Given the inadequacy of the current Communion 27  See, for example, Article 10(b) of the official communiqué of the meeting of the Primates of the Global South held in Kigali, Rwanda, September 2006. 28  Resolutions 3 and 4b of the Statement from the Global South Primates Steering Committee held in Cairo, Egypt, 14–15 February 2014. http://www.globalsouthanglican .org/index.php/blog/comments/statement_from_the_global_south_primates_steering_ committee_cairo_egypt_14 (accessed 8 March 2016). 29  G AFCON statement, The Nairobi Communiqué, 26 October 2013. The full text of the communiqué can be accessed online at the official GAFCON website: http://gafcon.org/news/ nairobi-communique (accessed 8 March 2016). 30   ‘The Formation of the Global Fellowship of Confessing Anglicans’, The Nairobi Communiqué.

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structures to deal with these emerging realignments, it would make sense for the Communion formally to commit to a harmonious division of global Anglicanism along existing theological and pastoral fault lines. Formalizing the split is not defeatist but a realistic acceptance of an irreversible fact that there are two different churches, indeed two different religions, within the one Communion, and it makes sense to separate the ‘false’ gospel from the true one. The paradox here is that both sides will claim to have the ‘true gospel’ and accuse the other of schism. To make the formal split as civil as possible, sacrifices must be made by each side where one side may have to give up on assets and others on names, that is, their very worth or their very identity! This is painful but possible if it is accepted that no sacrifice is too great to pay in pursuit of the cause of the gospel. Such a closure would also make sense as nothing else has proved capable of addressing the perpetual ‘Anglican crisis of life’. Indeed not to seek such a closure would prove tantamount to endorsing the suffocating embrace of ‘secular Christianity’, a compromise that would go beyond the boundaries of acceptable diversity. It must be borne in mind that Christian responsibility demands that unity avails for naught if pursued at the cost of biblical doctrine and its integrity. Through the leading of the Holy Spirit, it is possible to discern when it is that duty calls for building up relationships and when irreconcilable differences call for walking apart (Matthew 18:15–18). A sanctioned split will not only be the most pragmatic thing to do in the present circumstances but also a viable strategy in search for an authentic Anglicanism that can be redefined and ordered according to biblically-guided principles of coherence regarding what Anglicanism stands for, and what should hold Anglicans together. A sanctioned split in this sense becomes a necessary parting of ways and should not be seen as exclusion, excommunication, expulsion or elimination, but as an honest self-appraisal through which differing parties can choose a side that best represents their faith and reflects that for which they truly stand. Interestingly, even though Bishop Weston broke communion with the Sees of Mombasa and Uganda he always remained an Anglican, even if he had once entertained the option of becoming a Roman Catholic. Such are the complexities of being an Anglican, an identity which may still remain with us even when we stand separated or have chosen to ‘realign’. A second objective is for the ‘realigned’ Communion to undertake a spiritual pilgrimage in search of ‘authentic Anglicanism’ with a clear commitment to identifying what basic essentials should define such authenticity. The journey in search of Anglican confessional coherence should be guided by a desire to answer the question, ‘What should be the essential core or centre that should hold Anglicanism together?’ This search is not new but has tended to remain

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a largely academic exercise, with little institutional oversight. The principle of Anglican comprehensiveness, for example, has been in force since the days of the Elizabethan Settlement, but it was intended to preserve the integrity of the gospel and church unity in matters of core doctrines (essentials of faith) while allowing divergences on adiaphora. The 1968 Lambeth Conference defined comprehensiveness as ‘agreement on fundamentals, while tolerating disagreement on matters in which Christians may differ without feeling the necessity of breaking communion’.31 The principle of comprehensiveness has failed to serve any practical purpose because of the lack of guidance on what should be considered ‘fundamental doctrine’. On the contrary, the principle of ‘tolerance’ has encouraged theological pluralism, turning the Communion into a sort of the tower of Babel causing confusion on what should be believed as essential to faith and what should be treated as matters indifferent. A situation where every part of the Communion believes and teaches what each sees as fit for their context is proving unsustainable and Anglicanism is unable to help itself. What divides the Anglican Churches is far more than what unites them and it is time for the Communion to accept this. On formalizing the current split, the emerging realignment could then establish alliances of churches along confessional coherence based on a theological method or a ‘normative doctrinal core’ that through shared liturgy, a statement of faith and common ministry can provide a broad framework of fundamentals to guide the member churches. It is time that the Communion realized that a church or alliance of churches without a clear creed or confession of faith ceases to be part of the one universal church; even though it may survive in some form as a religious society, it is only a matter of time before syncretism, culturalism, ambiguity in beliefs, and schism will destroy it. There cannot be a church without a clear set of core doctrines and while fundamentals make the church, the church can only be the church if it is able to keep and perpetuate core doctrines – the raison d’être, the true mission for which alone the church exists. A church that neglects, distorts, compromises or misrepresents this role would cease to be a church because it would have lost its mission, which is primarily about the custody and faithful transmission of apostolic teaching or sound doctrine (1 Cor. 3:11; 2 Cor. 11:4; Galatians 1:8–9). A realigned Communion needs to establish an administrative coherence where a conference of bishops is tasked with the enforcement of fundamentals, that is, doctrinal or confessional coherence to which the member churches would adhere. Effective ecclesial structures can help establish and guarantee 31   The Lambeth Conference 1968 (London: SPCK, 1968), p. 140.

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mutual accountability and guide the discernment of the whole church. The Anglican Communion Covenant is a step in the right direction, but in the absence of a means of ensuring adherence and a clear Anglican coherence of faith to support it, the Covenant counts for nothing. Given internal Anglican pluralism, the Covenant and the whole discourse around it is simply part of unending Anglican discourse, particularly when it allows ‘any covenanting Church to withdraw from the covenant’ without jeopardizing its participation in the ‘Instruments of Communion or … its Anglican character’.32 This reflects the typical logic of comprehensiveness, where breaking the covenant does not deny a participant the right to remain Anglican or still be involved in the life of the Communion. In conclusion, then, the current Communion must die to give way to a realigned Anglicanism. The resulting denominations must each embrace a serious search for their own ecclesial coherence by honestly answering the question, ‘What must the “authentic Anglican” church, as a church (and not just any religious society), hold to be essential? And what should be the benchmark of determining such essentials?’ The Kikuyu legacy was not just about a commendable quest for church unity or inclusivity, but more about authentic mission. Kikuyu was about a sober realization that multiple missions had the potential for breeding Christian pluralism that would undermine the integrity of the one true gospel. While this should not be lost to us, we must also never lose sight of the Westonian search for the purpose of the church and what we must stand for – otherwise we simply cease to be a church and risk becoming a dispensable branch that, when pruned and severed from its very source and root, is good for nothing but firewood (John 15:1–8). Anglican pluralism is untenable for the attainment of the integrity of the gospel and it is time we set down to work and prune to secure our very survival and to achieve a productive mission. There is urgent need to sift through the rubble of our disintegration in order to redeem what is of the essence of the gospel of Christ and use it to reconstruct a realigned and redefined Anglicanism as the most viable way forward. This process might have moved significantly further at the meeting of Primates at Canterbury from 11–15 January 2016 where, although they agreed to ‘walk together’, they also discussed the ‘recent change to the doctrine of marriage by The Episcopal Church in the USA’ which, they felt, had serious relational consequences. Consequently they declared: ‘given the seriousness of these matters we formally acknowledge this distance by requiring 32  The Anglican Communion Covenant, Section 4.3.1: http://www.anglicancommunion.org/ media/99905/The_Anglican_Covenant.pdf (accessed 8 March 2016).

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that for a period of three years The Episcopal Church no longer represent us on ecumenical and interfaith bodies, should not be appointed or elected to an internal standing committee and that while participating in the internal bodies of the Anglican Communion, they will not take part in decision making on any issues pertaining to doctrine or polity.’ A Task Group was also appointed to take matters further.33 Whatever happens, it is hard to imagine a complete reconciliation after three years.

33  ‘Communiqué from the Primates of the Anglican Communion’, 15 Jan 2016: http://www .primates2016.org/articles/2016/01/15/communique-primates/ (accessed 10 March 2016).

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Manuscript Collections

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Edgington, S. D., ‘Economic and Social Dimensions of Mission Farms in Mashonaland Highveld, 1890–1939’ (PhD thesis, University of California, Los Angeles, 1996). Farrimond, Ken, ‘The Policy of the Church Missionary Society: Concerning the Development of Self-Governing Indigenous Churches, 1900–1942’ (PhD dissertation, University of Leeds, 2003). Kipkorir, B. E., ‘The Alliance High School and the Making of the Kenya African elite’ (PhD dissertation, University of Cambridge, 1969). Macintosh, G. B., ‘The Scottish Mission in Kenya’ (PhD dissertation, University of Edinburgh, 1969). Mashingaidze, E. K., ‘Christian Missions in Mashonaland, Southern Rhodesia, 1890– 1930’, (D. Phil, University of York, 1973). Murray, Jocelyn, ‘The Kikuyu Female Circumcision Controversy’ (PhD dissertation, University of California, 1974). Steinberg, Burkhard Eric, ‘The Relation of Confirmation to Baptism: A Mid-Twentieth Century Debate in The Church of England,’ (PhD dissertation, University of St Michael’s College, Toronto 1999). Walmsley, John, ‘The History of the Evangelical Party in the Church of England Between 1906 and 1928’ (University of Hull, Ph.D. thesis, 1980). Ward, Kevin, ‘The Development of Protestant Christianity in Kenya, 1910–1940’, (PhD dissertation, University of Cambridge, 1976).

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Index abstinence from alcohol 271–2 Africa Inland Church 280 Africa Inland Mission (AIM) 175, 244, 246, 253, 260, 263, 264, 265–7, 268, 270, 271, 273, 277 African theology 252–8 Alliance High School (Thogoto, Kenya) 261, 263, 268–9, 278 Anglican Church of Kenya 280 Anglican Communion Environmental Network 117–8 Anglican Evangelical Group Movement  200–1 Anglican identity 129–130, 137–138, 141, 142–144 Anglican-Roman Catholic International Commission 92 Anglo-Catholicism 124–125, 126, 131, 134–143, 155–157 Arthur, John 261, 268, 273, 275–7, 278, 286 Azariah, V. S. 179, 218 baptism 123, 148, 159, 161, 167, 169 Bardsley, Cyril 200, 201–2, 204–5 Bartlett, Daniel 173, 200–1, 264–5 Baskerville, George 183 Baylis, Frederick 174 Benson, Edward White 216 Bethune-Baker, J. F. 45–6 Bible Churchmen’s Missionary Society (BCMS) 173, 200–4, 262, 264 Bible League 200 Bible translation 170–171 Blunt, J. H. 23 British and Foreign Bible Society (BFBS) 171 British South Africa Company (BSAC)  232–4 Burnet, Gilbert 20 Burns, Sibella 245 Carpenter-Garnier, Mark 211, 214 Cash, William Wilson 189, 204–6, 211–4, 218–9, 220–1 Ceylon 211–5, 219–20

Chambers, George 188 Chase, G. H. 31, 38 Church Missionary Society (CMS) 1, 46, 122, 165, 166, 174, 182, 189, 192–221, 244, 253, 260–2, 263, 264–5, 267–8, 269, 271, 277, 286 1901 Memorandum 195–9 and diocesanization 207–15 Church of England Doctrine Commission 110 Man and Nature 110–13 Church of Scotland Mission (CSM) 244, 253, 263, 269, 271, 273, 279 Church of South India (CSI) 70–72, 143, 157–158, 187, 190, 191 church union 142–143, 153, 159, 160–161 Colenso, John William 2, 284–5 confirmation 11–33, 44–5, 61–70, 123, 125, 133, 139, 150, 166, 167, 169, 170 Sarum rite 12–13 1552 Prayer Book 12–13 1604 Prayer Book 15–17 1662 Prayer Book 16–17 1918 Rite 38–40 Lionel Thornton on 61–70 Cranmer, Thomas 79–80, 92 Creighton, Mandell 27–8 Cripps, Arthur Shearly 225–42 Crowther, Samuel 195 Cummins, George 26–7 Davidson, Randall Thomas 11, 33–6, 121, 131, 132–4, 182, 204, 216–7, 288–9 Dead, Florence 245 Diocese of Mashonaland 233–5 Diocese of Mombasa 166 Diocese of Uganda 166 diocesanization 207–15 Dix, Gregory 41, 43, 61, 143 Dolling, Robert 80 Downing, Lee 268 East African Revival 255–6, 262, 278–80 ecclesiastical discipline 123, 125, 131

321

Index ecumenism 45–162 English Church Union 77 episcopacy 124, 125–126, 128, 129–130, 133, 135, 147–148, 149–150, 151, 159–161, 168, 216–9 Episcopal Church, The (also ECUSA and PECUSA) 158, 295, 299–300 eucharistic sacrifice 79–93 Evangelical Alliance 26 Evangelicalism 154, 157, 199–200

inculturation 128, 132–133, 169, 170–171 Indian National Conference of Mission (1912)  178 intercommunion in England 149–57 intercommunion in Africa 124, 160 International Missionary Conference (Jerusalem 1928) 190

Faith and Order Commission 146–149 Farrer, Austin 83–5 Female Genital Mutilation ‘Female Circumcision Crisis’ (1929) 263, 272–8 Fenn, C. C. 196, 198, 220 Fletcher, Joseph 104–6 Fox, H. E. 200–3, 216, 217 Free Churches 129–130, 147–149, 150–151, 154–156 Frere, W. H. 29, 31 Fundamentalism 269

Kahuhia Church Council (CMS) 272–3 Kang’ethe, Joseph 275–6 Kavirondo 264, 266, 268 Kenya Missionary Council 280 Kenyan Alliance of Protestant Christians  260–80 Keswick Convention 165, 166 Kikuyu Central Association (KCA) 273–6, 278 Kikuyu Conference 1913 11, 32–35, 122–124, 176–8, 243–51, 253–4, 257–9, 260, 284, 285, 286–90, 299 1918 159–161, 258, 261 Kikuyu Independent Schools Association (KICA) 277 Kikuyu Karing’a Educational Association  277 Kitching, Arthur 188 Knight-Bruce, George Wyndham Hamilton  228, 231–3, 236–7

Gibson, J. P. S. R. 211, 213, 214 Global Anglican Future Conference (GAFCON) 292–3, 295, 296–7 Global South Anglican Churches 290–95 Gore, Charles 31, 82–3, 90, 124, 131, 134–135, 181 Gospel Mission Society (GMS) 253, 271, 273, 277 Gray, Robert 284 Grieve, George 269 Gwatkin, G. M. 45 Hampton Court Conference 14 Harcourt, Sir William 226–7 Hattersley, Charles 172 Henson, Herbert Hensley 125–6, 180–1 Heywood, Richard 184, 188, 266, 277 Holy Communion 123, 124, 125, 127, 133–135, 136, 148, 152, 153, 154, 156, 159, 160, 161, 163–164, 166, 169 Houlder, A. C. 211, 215 Hurlburt, Charles 175, 246, 265–6, 270 Hurst, Madge 245

Jacob, Edgar 288 Justin Martyr 66–7

Lambeth Conference 1867 281–2 1888 40 1908 175 1920 1, 40, 41, 185, 265 1930 281 1948 294 1968 2, 298 1998 117 Consultative Body 35, 121–122, 132, 133 Lambeth Quadrilateral 27, 153–154, 155, 157, 158, 159, 161–162 Lampe, Geoffrey 43–44, 47–53, 60, 61–3, 69

322

Index

Lang, Cosmo Gordon 182, 186, 188 Leakey, Harry 175 Liturgy 123 London Missionary Society (LMS) 238

Procter, Francis 23, 29–30 Pulpit exchange 155–6 Puller, F. W. 28, 38, 41, 43, 46 Pusey, Edward Bouverie 23, 81–2

Mackinnon, Donald 89–90, 93 Maclean, Norman 247–9 Macquarrie, John 94, 115 Manley, G. T. 204 Mascall, Eric 107–8 Mason, A. J. 28, 38, 41, 43, 61 Mbogo, Rosemary 251 McFague, Sallie 115–6 Methodist Church of Kenya 280 missions and Islam 122 and native church 167 federation 123, 124–125,133, 135 Modernism 126–128, 130–131, 132, 138, 139–140, 171–173 Montgomery, Henry 1 Mott, John 173 Moule, Handley 180–1 Mozley, J. K. 103

Quick, Oliver Chase 96, 99–100, 106

National Council of Churches of Kenya (NCCK) 280 Neill, Stephen 225, 282 Nestorianism 46 Ogilvie, J. W. 267 Oldham, J. H. 173, 276 Owen, D. R. G. 114–5 Owen, W. E. 268, 269–70 Oxford Movement 77–8 Oywaya, Esau 269–70 Paget, Edward 239–40 Peacocke, Arthur 112–5 Peel, William George 121, 124, 166, 174, 175, 177–8, 180–1, 247, 287 Pike, James 104–5, 108–9 Pilkington, George 170 Polkinghorne, John 117 Potter, Horatio 26 Presbyterian Church of East Africa 280 Primates’ Meeting 296, 299

Ramsey, A. Michael 42, 65, 85–6, 110 Raven, Charles 45–6 Rhodes, Cecil 228–9, 231–3, 236 Robinson, Gene 3, 295 Robinson, J. A. T. 106–10 Rogers, Guy 201, 203 Rowling, F. 170–1 Ryder, Henry 22 Scott, Henry 175, 246, 248 Scott, Isabelle 243, 246–51 Smith, Algernon Stanley 187–8 Smith, Robert Payne 26 Social Action 147 Society for the Propagation of the Gospel 1, 174 Society of the Sacred Mission 238 Song, Ch’eng-Tsi 218 Stauffacher, John 265 Stock, Eugene 197–9, 220 Student Christian Movement 165 Stumpt, Hilda 246 Sumner, Charles 22 Sumner, John Bird 22 Tait, A. C. 24–6, 32 Talbot, Edward 174, 179 Temple, Frederick 31–2 Temple, William 94–106 On Sacraments 96–103 Test Act (1573) 18 Thogoto (CSM Kikuyu mission station) 261 Thornton, Lionel 42–76 Tucker, Alfred 166, 167–169, 170, 264 United Methodist Mission 253, 263 United Missionary Conference (Nairobi 1909)  286 Universities’ Mission to Central Africa (UMCA) 1, 165, 183

323

Index Venn, Henry 194–5 Verbi, Dinah 245 Weatherhead, Herbert 171–3 Webb-Peploe, H. W. 203 Weston, Frank 33–36, 121, 126–130, 160–161, 173, 179–81, 183, 253, 262, 283, 287, 290 Wheatly, Charles 20 White, Lynn 111 Whitehead, Henry 186

Whiting, J. B. 196 Wilberforce, Robert 23 Wilberforce, Samuel 22 Williams, Rowan 86–91, 92–3, 116–7 Willis, John Jamieson 121, 122–124, 163–191, 244, 245, 250, 263, 286 Wood, C. L. 25 World Missionary Conference (Edinburgh 1910) 174, 253, 270 Zimbabwe 225–42